About The Playwright

Ayub Khan Din was born in 1961 in Salford, Lancashire. He admits he did not enjoy school and left with three CSEs to become a hairdresser. After reading the actor David Niven’s autobiography he was inspired to pursue a career in acting and enrolled on a drama course at the local college. Here he began to write his first stage play East is East for Tamasha Theatre Company. It was first staged at Birmingham Repertory Theatre before being adapted by Khan Din into an acclaimed feature film.

From drama school, Khan-Din joined a travelling Asian theatre company called Tara Arts. The company toured to small towns in England wherever there was an Asian population. He then landed a non-speaking part in Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Launderette (1985) and later played the lead in the director’s next film Sammy & Rosie Get Laid (1987), both films scripted by Hanif Kureishi.

From theatre he moved to television, working in sit-coms and soap operas, playing a variety of roles from doctors, to lawyers and shopkeepers. But the success of East Is East changed the direction of his career, proving he could secure better work as a writer than as an actor.

His second play Last Dance At Dum Dum (1999) centres on the elderly members of the diminishing Anglo-Indian in Calcutta and their imperial history.

His play Notes On Falling Leaves (2004), explores the relationship between a son and his mother who is suffering from dementia and was first performed at The Royal Court.
His most recent work is Rafta, Rafta (2007), an adaptation of Bill Naughton’s 1963 play All In Good Time. This comedy is set in a working class community in Bolton and examines the domestic difficulties of an immigrant Indian family. It won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2008.

Ayub Khan Din has also mentored first time screenwriters for a new film fund initiated by the UK Film Council.

Khan-Din is currently working on two projects – a film script of Rafta, Rafta and a sequel to East Is East. The new film, called West Is West will focus on the characters of George Khan, his English wife Ella and his youngest son Sajid. George travels with them to Pakistan to show Sajid the Pakistani way of life but once there, he is confronted with the decisions he made about leaving his first wife and daughters in Pakistan.