Tormented visibility: Extremism, stigma, and staging resistance in Omar El-Khairy and Nadia Latif’s Homegrown

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the circumstances surrounding the cancellation of Omar El-Khairy and Nadia Latif’s play Homegrown in 2015. Commissioned by the National Youth Theatre, it was unexpectedly cancelled days before it was due to open. This move can be attributed to heightened sensitivity towards so-called “extreme” opinions of the kind Homegrown features, as the British government tightened definitions of unacceptable speech and placed the onus on civil society bodies to police it. Yet, as this article argues, Homegrown’s treatment can also be understood in terms of the historical commissioning processes for minority – especially Muslim – theatre, which privilege certain topics and modes of address that result in marginal communities’ continued stigmatization. From the outset, Homegrown was alert to these constraints and sought to counter them through a radical refusal to conduct its debates in the manner approved by the framing conventions of security discourse and the governing etiquette of post-9/11 theatre.