Same Same by Shireen Mula
I draw a picture. Me. Me with a line drawn down me, right down my face down my nose, down my middle. I tear along this line – tear me in two. I put the right away. I hold onto the left, I’m going to hold it all day.
It is five to midnight and Asha is about to turn 21. 21 means grown-up and ready for the world but Asha, adopted and unsure of her past, feels she doesn’t know who she is yet. At five to midnight Nid remembers the decision she made at 21, a decision that continues to echo in both women’s minds.
Shireen Mula’s structurally innovative new work is a journey through alternative realities and multiple identities, driven by a volatile mixture of hope and fear. Stories collide with reality in an exquisitely fractured jigsaw; Same Same is a lyrical story of regret, longing and mixed-race identity set in a dark recess of contemporary London.
Same Same was presented at Ovalhouse, in 2011.
CAST Zoë Nicole, Bharti Patel & Joseph Radcliffe | DIRECTION Dan Barnard & Rachel Briscoe | COSTUME DESIGN Chris Gylee | LIGHTING DESIGN Michael Nabarro | COMPOSER Richard Hammarton
Same Same was supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Fenton Arts Trust, the Garrick Charitable Trust, Unity Theatre Trust and The Royal Victoria Hall Foundation.
“Same Same is elegant, eloquent and hugely empathetic … It’s hypnotic, but soothingly so … a tender and poetic charm that will long linger in the memory.”