A Bollywood musical set in Belfast offers the chance to challenge cultural assumptions - in a light-hearted way, writes Fionola Meredith.
In a strip-lit church hall in Belfast city centre, a posse of young women are shimmying and swaying through a series of intricate dance moves, while in another corner a huddle of leather-jacketed teenagers toss snatches of improvised dialogue to each other, laughing when they stumble over a line. These are the final preparations for Chaat Masala: a Bollywood for Belfast, an ambitious project run by Tinderbox Theatre Company and the ArtsEkta ethnic arts organisation.
Featuring a cast of more than 30 young community performers from India, Sri Lanka, China, Ghana and, of course, Belfast, the play will be performed for two nights only (March 19th and 20th) at the city's Waterfront Hall.
The plan to put on a high-profile extravaganza of live Indian music, dancing and singing first occurred to Nisha Tandon, co-director of ArtsEkta, many years ago. Tandon, who arrived in the city in the late 1970s, is a familiar face on Belfast's arts scene. She has long been the driving force behind the popular Belfast Mela, or Indian summer festival, where locals can try a spot of bhangra dancing, or get their hands painted with henna, before sampling the delights of authentic dishes from all over India.
"It's been in the back of my mind for years to do a showcase like Chaat Masala," she says. Inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams musical, she was determined to organise a uniquely Belfast version, complete with typically rumbustious "Norn Iron" banter.
This determinedly inter-cultural approach to arts practice informs all Tandon's work. Never one to stand apart or aloof, she's well-known for her infectious energy and her ability to get projects off the ground, mainly due to the sheer force of her personality.
But it was only when Tandon met John McCann, the outreach director of Tinderbox, two years ago, that she felt she had found a suitable partner for the development of her Belfast Bollywood plans.
"Nisha had the germ of an idea: the journey of a young person from Mumbai to Belfast," says McCann. "So it was a case of developing characters and improvising storylines around that central notion."
This time last year, the first tentative showcase presentation emerged, featuring an all-Indian cast.
"The script at that time was really an examination of the complexities of Indian-ness in contemporary Belfast, with a particular focus on intra-community tensions," says McCann. "I think, for the 250 people who came to see that performance, vastly non-Indian in make-up, it was an experience that fractured any sense of homogeneity they might have had about any particular minority in our community."
That refusal to gloss over the tensions within minority ethnic communities, but rather to carefully disentangle and examine them, is one of the striking aspects of the Chaat Masala project. But, as McCann points out, the decision to include non-Indian actors in the final version extends the scope of the play still further, allowing participants to explore the complexities of the relationships between Indians and non-Indians. In fact, the name Chaat Masala is particularly apposite here, referring as it does to an oriental combination of spices, all mixed up together.
What are the challenges for a theatre company of such a project?
"You need to be in it for the long haul and to be aware that an organisation will only work with you when the time is right for them," McCann says. "There's a lot of tokenism about, [minority ethnic] organisations getting phone calls from people just doing a tick-box exercise. The thing to remember is that the play is owned by the young people themselves: the script comes directly from recorded improvisations, and it's been great to watch that multilayered process take place."
Mukesh Sharma, Tandon's co-director at ArtsEkta, who will be playing both the Indian tabla (a two-piece percussion instrument) and the harmonium in the performance, believes that it's vital that Chaat Masala is based on the real-life experience of immigrants. Not least in the list of challenges for new arrivals in Belfast, Sharma says, is the bewildering slang - and the inevitable sectarian questions.
"People get asked 'Bout ye?' and 'Are ye a Fenian?' - we've included things like that in the play," says Sharma.
In one part of the script, a white customer asks Vir, the central character: "Where did you get a tan the like of that?" Vir responds: "What? I'm not white." "You're telling me" is the rejoinder. It's an example of the casual racism that black and Asian people encounter on the streets of Belfast every day. So will the grim realities of racism in Northern Ireland be reflected in the play?
"Only in a light-hearted way," says Sharma. "We're adding in all the angles, all the realities of life in Northern Ireland. At one point, a character says: 'I'd rather my son married a black than a Catholic.' That's the way it sometimes is here."
For details, see www.tinderbox.org.uk. Admission to Chaat Masala is free, but booking is essential