Welcome

Welcome to the Rep Insight Resource Pack for East is East.

East is East is a dark comedy set in 1971 about the Khan family; George Khan, a Pakistani man, his English wife Ella, and their seven children who live in a working class area of Salford. Against a backdrop of the Indo-Pakistan war George feels that both his homeland and his family life are under siege.

Despite George’s desire to be a good Muslim and to both educate his children at the Mosque and arrange their marriages, he has an unorthodox marriage to Ella. Having her British name on legal documents has enabled George to own his business and rent a home in England and Ella has the independence to work just as hard as him in their chip shop. But he worries that his children are too modern and influenced by elements of the English culture that he disdains.

In turn, the children are confused by mixed messages – they covertly eat sausages and bacon, sneak off to college, wear English fashions, date white girls – then endure circumcism, attend the Mosque, and watch as their father arranges suitable marriage partners. Two of his sons, desperate for his approval, struggle to reconcile their Muslim beliefs with their everyday existences. The children are caught between their father’s insistence on Asian traditions, their mother’s laissez-faire attitude and their own ambitions to become citizens of modern Britain.

Ayub Khan Din has spoken of how this play is autobiographical and that the character of George is not meant as “a Pakistani everyman”:

“The parents are drawn directly from my own family. The youngest boy, Sajid, is me as a child…. I was living in a parka…. Enoch Powell was always being thrown in my face as a child, and the whole Bangladesh war of independence had a big effect on our household, because what happened in the house always revolved around the TV news. In a way, it was almost as if the disintegration of Pakistan was happening in our house at the same time. It affected everything that was going on.”

“It was a personal story. I wasn’t writing about any specific community, I was writing about my father.”

Ayub Khan-Din speaking to Kamera.co.uk

The play is written in a naturalistic style and is full of comedy but also deals with domestic violence and contains strong language.

All of the East Is East resources on these pages have been sourced and written by Nicky Robey.