IdeasTap member Sabrina Mahfouz and her playwriting collective Knocked For Six won £2,500 through our Groups Fund. She tells us how she put the funding to use with the group's first full production, End of the Line...
The end of The End came after we’d ushered (maybe pushed, a bit) 170 people to squash themselves up into a rush-hour-like makeshift tube carriage over four days. It came after we’d managed to negotiate theatre idiosyncrasies into an east London nightclub basement (we love the Workshop) for a week whilst surviving on pizzas and chips from the upstairs deli.
Some of London’s most respected theatres and organisations (The Royal Court, The Bush Theatre, Art on the Underground, Arts Council) were represented in the audience and gave us feedback. Some of us backed beers and tequilas to mark the event and others took the jukebox over with classic Nineties tracks from the likes of Bon Jovi, just to remind ourselves that despite our sell-out success, we definitely were still not very cool.
So how did it start? Hmmm. With the Royal Court’s Unheard Voices Young Writer’s Programme. With Ola Animashawun and Mike Bartlett getting us to write down our crazy ideas. With cakes and halal steaks and the Phoenix Bar and the London Festival Fringe and a theme of "underground" which became The Underground and Soho Theatre and The Westminster Prize and a few lies and deadlines and castings at Cuckoo Club and thugs we knew, some we didn’t (but wouldn’t mind if we did) and the Roadtrip Bar and great acting and spreadsheets and Natalie Ibu lending a directorial hand and a unanimous love of London and obviously, IDEASTAP GROUP FUNDING!
But mainly, at the core of Knocked For Six are eight voices who generally do not shut up. Somehow Mediah Ahmed, Zia Ahmed, Rumi Begum, Triska Hamid, Zainab Hasan, Fenar Mohammed-Ali, Amber Mun and myself all managed to stay silent for long enough to write and rewrite our pieces – with changes being made right up until the last night. Some of us had to stay vocal – with Zia, Fenar and Zainab taking roles in the production and me on the mic making tube announcements.
The rest of the cast – Alexander Aplerku, David Ajao, Lydia Rose (pictured) Bewley, Gabriella Schmidt, Rhoda Ofori-Attah, Lelo Majozi and Jim Tanner – made magic with our words and all deserve to be superstars. It is definitely a work in progress and something we all look forward to seeing again in some form or another in the future. But for now, I will shut up and let some others tell it like it is:
“I thought the concept was great... there were moments of moving insight as well as poignancy”
Clare McQuillan, The Royal Court
“I really enjoyed it... all brilliant”
Emma Love, The Independent
“I went to the end of the line last night... and what a trip it was... from bitch slaps to rats, Sloaney chats and Art Attacks you didn’t want to get off!”
Natalie Loader, Global Media
“Despite its title, End of the Line is clearly just the beginning for this team of young writers. I look forward to whatever destination they take us towards.”
Scott Matthewman, The Stage
Finally, here are six words from a few members of Knocked For Six, summarising their experience of the show:
Triska Hamid: Delight, joy, challenge, pioneering, fresh, marvellous.
Mediah Ahmed: "Hard work but well worth it!"
Rumi Begum: Challenging, creative, exhausting, exploring, communication, accomplishing.
Amber Mun: "Definitely the funkiest tube ride ever!"
Rhoda Ofori-Attah: Funny, challenging, bonding, proud, quick, new.