#EdFringe 2023: Lubna Kerr talks Tickbox 2!

The first thing to say is that the first four people who come into my show get a Tunnocks caramel wafer! Supplies are here!

I salute your marketing strategy Lubna, could you tell me a little about your Fringe show?

The show is a semi-autobiographical story  about my parents’ journey from Lahore , Pakistan to Govan Glasgow. My parents came from a very middle-class life in Pakistan. This was in the sixties, and my father received a scholarship to pursue a PhD in chemistry from Strathclyde University. I believe it was part of the Commonwealth Fund. I’m not entirely sure because he’s no longer with us, but I imagine that’s what it was. The British were looking for people to come over after the war. My father was teaching chemistry in one of the top colleges in Lahore and he felt that a British education would help him become a professor in Pakistan.

So he brought my mum over. Now my mum, she came from a life where in Pakistan – I say this in the show, she wasn’t posh, she was just normal. It was normal to have someone who cleaned for you. Even the cleaners had someone to clean for them. So, my mum had never needed to cook. Although she loved to, she never needed to. She’d never cleaned, she’d never had to do anything. Shopping was a pleasure. You would go and buy new bangles or new jewellery and not need to shop for food as that  was done by someone else. It was a pleasant life of luxury. 

So, I try to get across  in the play ,the culture shock of what it was like for my mum, when they  landed in Glasgow in December!

My mum had sandals and a sari on. Whoever was in charge of British PR did a great job!

Yes! So they came here in the sixties, and I wanted to educate people, especially people of colour who complain about racism, about what it’s like now – and tell them, “You ain’t got nothing on what happened back then.”

My parents and other people who came before them: they broke the ice; they did the hard work. I mean, they had names said to them that you’d be locked up for now, and were treated openly discriminatorily. Now it’s maybe undercover and unconscious bias, so not as obvious.

And how does this feed into the show, Tickbox 2?

The comedy play tells their journey, and then it reflects on my journey of growing up as a Pakistani girl in Glasgow. It’s more about me reflecting back on what it was like then, so I play different characters. I portray myself at many ages throughout my life, from an 8/9 year-old girl up to the present day. It’s not linear – definitely not. It keeps people on their toes!

I got funding from Creative Scotland in 2019 to do the Research and Development and write a short 20 mins extract. A good deal more form filling later and in 2021 I got funding from Creative Scotland to write the whole play. I worked with Johnny McKnight as the director, and I had Kol Bjort Sigfusdottir as editor , Douglas Maxwell, Jen McGregor as the dramaturg and Mela Adula as set designer. It was a brilliant team!

Last year, I performed just under two weeks at Summerhall. No funding involved; the year before I had 6 nights with Army at the Fringe, and  that was wonderful. I did have funding then, so I could give a lot of free tickets to people of colour. I’m passionate about diversifying audiences! By the end of the sixth night, about 80% of the audience was people of colour, which was lovely. It’s all about building trust, you know. As a Pakistani Asian, I understand the culture, so I make sure not to do anything insulting or unacceptable for families, with appropriate language. Then last year, when I had no free tickets, there were some nights when over half the audience were people of colour.  Word spread through the community and people of colour were keen to see it.

Wonderful, and necessary: Edinburgh does not have diverse audiences as a rule.

They say 8% of the scholar population of Scotland is of colour…

Well, those 8% are not at the theatre.

No, they’re not usually! There was one memorable comedy show back in 2018 where there was a crowd of brown people at the back, and a white couple at the front. As I interacted closely with the audience in comedy, I overheard the white woman explaining to her companion that the crowd must be my family! I’m very conscious that people might assume that because I’m brown, I must know everyone else brown in the audience. But I always make it clear that I don’t know them, that they’ve come to the show because they’re interested and want to see it.

It’s funny to observe the audience at my play when it’s so mixed, like when it’s 90% people of color and some Caucasians. They laugh at very specific things. It’s like a performance for me, seeing how the different groups react to different jokes. The people of colour laugh at jokes that the Caucasians won’t get, and vice versa. It’s just hilarious to watch this interplay between them.

hey also laugh at the same jokes too and it’s lovely to see that relationship between the different sections of the audience.

I’ve actually done workshops before, I asked groups of people of colour in Glasgow and Edinburgh, “Why don’t you go to the theatre?” I also had  one-on-one conversations, as well as group chats. People said that they don’t want to see themselves portrayed badly on stage, or on television, or in film. They don’t want to be seen as the baddies, they’re  not used to seeing people who look like them  on stage.. Or hear stories that they can relate to.

I hated watching the Bodyguard on television. I really enjoyed it until the very last scene because it’s like, “Oh, a Muslim person is a paedophile, is a terrorist, has forced marriages.” That’s obviously all we do in our life. It’s not my reality. I don’t know any of those people, and that’s not happening to me, or around me.

In the play, I talk about this absence of normal Pakistani stories. I see it as a way to educate people on all sides. For people of colour, I want to show them that there’s more to the arts than just being on stage; you can be a writer, director, musician, etc. And during my tours, I do Q&A sessions where I engage with the audience. When they come in, I offer Pakistani food and play Pakistani music, creating a welcoming atmosphere.

So, touring has been a great experience, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my work with diverse audiences. Have you had Gulab Jamun?  

When I was a younger man, I used to somewhat live on them!

Then you know how powerful they can be! During the break, we offer tea and coffee, and then we have a Q&A session. It’s great because it gives the audience the opportunity to engage with me directly and ask all sorts of questions. Unlike the Fringe, we can’t do that there, so these sessions are really important.

I’m trying to educate the audience on different things. For people of colour, it’s about getting into the arts, while for Caucasians, it’s about understanding the difficulties and ongoing discrimination that we face. You don’t know what it’s like until you’ve experienced racial discrimination yourself.

 Johnny McKnight, who directed the play before so brilliantly, is a fantastic white male director with lots of experience in one-man shows. But this year, I wanted a different perspective, so Jairus Obayomi, a black woman brought up in Britain like me, joined us. She said I’ve been too kind, just glossing over the really hard issues because I didn’t want to upset the audience, and she’s right.

So I’ve rewritten parts of the play with some subtle but impactful changes. Working with a movement director this year has brought a different dimension to the performance, making the movement much more pronounced.

Jairus, being someone who has experienced racial abuse and discrimination, urged me to emphasize the message of racial issues more strongly. In the past two years, I’ve greeted people on their way out, and it’s interesting to see how different audiences react. Some Caucasian attendees have approached me, offering hugs and apologies for what my parents might have gone through, while Asians have shared their own experiences of similar hardships faced by their families.

This new version of the play hits harder, and it may make people feel uncomfortable, but I believe that’s what theatre is about. I want them to leave thinking about the reality of racial discrimination and how we can make a change.

When you’re in the trenches, it’s challenging to speak up, but at least discussing it is one way to create awareness. Maybe by speaking up and making people think about their actions, we can influence some to be better. If they reflect on it and realize, “Oh, what I did was really awful,” maybe they’ll be less awful the next time. Now, practically speaking, how is your venue this year?

Each venue has its own unique qualities, and personally, I can’t fault any of them. Summer Hall was brilliant, and I loved every bit of performing there. Pleasance Courtyard is different, but I’m excited to be doing theatre there it’s like a dream come true. It’s unexpected, as I always thought I would do stand up at Pleasance.

When Nic Connaughton offered me the opportunity to perform there, I immediately said yes. It’s thrilling, and I don’t want to become complacent. I know I need to actively promote the show, so I’ve been putting up posters and leaflets  around town. and I have more posters to put up.

It’s a lot of work, but I’m enjoying it. I love talking about the play, and you can tell I’m passionate about it. People are concerned I’ll get tired, but I say I can be tired after  the run.

The adrenaline keeps you going, and you can relax in a dark room the next month.

Absolutely. Finding that balance is crucial. I’ll be doing some standup comedy sets, like 10 minutes here and there, but since the show is at 5 o’clock, I’ll have the rest of the evening free.

That sounds like a good plan. And you’re still working for the NHS, right?

Yes, I work one day a week. I run diabetes clinics and cardiovascular risk clinics. I have taken some holidays though to focus on the performance.

Ah, that’s great. So you’ll have some time off during your performances?

I’m really excited about being at the Pleasance and running the show.

The adrenaline keeps you going, and you can relax in a dark room the next month.

Absolutely. Finding that balance is crucial. I’ll be doing some standup comedy sets, like 10 minutes here and there, but since the show is at 5 o’clock, I’ll have the rest of the evening free. I did a full run of my comedy standup show called ‘Where Are You REALLY From?’ That was just part of the Free Fringe and I really enjoyed it. It was absolutely brilliant.

It’s great. What PBH helped create is utterly invaluable

Yeah. Because I’ve done the free fringe, I know the quality of what can be in there, and I know why they do it, because I’m lucky I’m not paying for accommodation in Edinburgh. I’m lucky that I’ve got a permanent part-time job that’s allowed me to save up during the year, and I can afford PR etc.

You know, I didn’t make any money last year at Summerhall. I think I just about broke even.

Congratulations on just breaking even.

AYes! So if I do that this year, great. Yeah. But if I lose money, so be it. But I’m not gonna lose thousands, because I’m not paying for travel and accommodation, and all that sort of stuff. I can take more of a gamble. The Free Fringe allows art to thrive. It gives people a chance who just want to do a couple of nights, maybe three, four nights, try something new, you know, and then come back with it the following year.

It’s interesting for you to experience the different ways of doing the Fringe though.

It is. Absolutely.

So what ambitions do you have for Tickbox 2?

What’s the next step today? Just worry about August, haha! But…I so want to take the show internationally, because it is for anybody that speaks English, it’s an accessible show. It’s also flexible. Where I’ve performed to crowds with a large Asian presence, I’ve increased the amount of Urdu. I still provided translations so that nobody felt left out. But there were some bits I didn’t translate, because I’m like, “You’ll just have to work that out.”

There’s an art to relating what you’re saying by context, and not always spelling everything out!

I think the word “ infection “ works for most people. So for Tickbox, I’d like to take it to North America, to Canada and the Middle East. You have both British expats and lots of Asians working there as well. I want to go to Pakistan when there’s less unrest there. I’d love to take it to India  ..and Australia, and you know, even to Singapore, because the migrant experience and, sadly, racism, is universal.

At the moment, I want to have lots of people at my performances and I want them to reflect on what they have seen and if it changes the way they feel about migration then that would be great.

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For Tickets and more information on Tickbox 2, click here!