South Asian Heritage Month at The Rep

Our friends at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre and Jaivant Patel Company, have launched South Asian Heritage Month, Wolverhampton & The Black Country (Fri 18 Jul to Sun 17 Aug), with this year’s theme being Roots to Routes – a celebration of the rich cultures, histories, and communities of South Asia and where they’ve come from, where they are now, and where they’re heading.

So in support of this brilliant venture we thought we should reflect on The Rep’s past, present and future when it comes to celebrating South Asian Heritage.

From ground-breaking performances that dazzled and delighted our audiences, to new initiatives that have enriched the lives of our communities.

• In 1977, Bill Pryde directs The Seed by Derek Nicholls and Ray Speakman, the first production to explore the lives of the Pakistani community in Birmingham. It features Asian actors Renu Setna and Darien Angadi.
• In 1989, The community play Heartlanders written collaboratively by Stephen Bill, Anne Devlin and David Edgar for the City of Birmingham’s centenary year, it involves 300 local people, mostly amateurs, in celebration of Birmingham’s diversity.
• In 1996, Ayub Khan Din’s East Is East premieres at The Rep. It goes on to enjoy national and international success before returning to Birmingham in 2021 for The Rep’s 50th anniversary of our home on Centenary Square and East Is East‘s 25th anniversary, directed by our Associate Director Iqbal Khan.
• In 2000, Indhu Rubasingham directed a version of the Indian epic The Ramayana, which our Young Rep company recreated in 2017 under the direction of our former Head of Education, Bhavik Parmar.
• In Nov 2023, the award-winning Wolverhampton based Jaivant Patel Company brought Waltzing The Blue Gods – a part auto-biographical, part fantasy Kathak dance production, in the context of modern contemporary Britain that’s proud of its LGBTQI+ narratives. The Jaivant Patel Company will also be returning to The Rep later this year (Fri 21 & Sat 22 Nov) with a new full-length work ‘ASTITVA’ – tickets will be open for Priority Sale (Tue 22 Jul, 12pm).
• In Feb 2024,  we launched the UK premiere of Bhangra Nation, a fan favourite musical that was nominated for multiple awards:
  • • UK Theatre Awards
      Nominated for ‘Best Design’ for Michael Taylor’s work
    • Eastern Eye ACTA’s Arts Culture and Theatre Award
      WINNER: ‘Best Production’
    • What’s On Stage 2024 Awards​ 
      Nominated: Best Regional Production
      Nominated: Best Choreography – Rujuta Vaidya
      Nominated: Best Supporting Performer in a Musical – Siobhan Athwal
• In Mar 2024, in partnership with Kali Theatre, hosted the Kali Writers Discovery Showcase – where four striking short plays by newly discovered West Midlands women writers of South Asian descent from Birmingham and beyond were performed script in hand to our audiences. One of these plays, The Recipe was written by Kerena Jagpal who later went on to star in two of our sold-out 2025 shows, Community and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
• In Apr 2024, saw the return of Iqbal Khan to directing at The Rep with SILENCE a new play inspired by the remarkable personal testimonies of people who lived through the last days of the British Raj, after the success of his 5-star production Of Mice and Men in 2023 and East is East in 2021. Iqbal Khan returned again in 2025, to direct Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti‘s (A Kind of People) adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel from Sathnam Sanghera (Empireland), Marriage Material.

As a Birmingham theatre it was always been important to us that our programming on stage reflects the community and city we are so proud of – not only in the stories that the shows that we put on stage tell, but the voices behind them and the faces that appear on stage. This year we’re so excited about the productions we’ve already announced and for the ones we’ll be announcing very soon…

From music, to dance, to tributes to iconic Bollywood cinema we have something in store for anyone to celebrate the rich cultures, histories, and communities of South Asia.