Funny Girl

Azime, the shy twenty year-old from a Kurdish family, grows up in London. East and West, Islam, Secularism, Burka and slim…in both Azime’s worlds there are clear rules: how she should be, and what she should do.  There is a huge chasm between these two worlds. Her Kurdish school friend falls in love and dies in mysterious circumstances. Azime tries to find out why. However, shortly after, there is a terrorist attack on the underground causing hundreds of deaths and she realises that she must speak out. In her own way. Secretly she signs up for a comedy acting course, slips on a burka and gets on stage…. as a world-first muslim female comic. Her appearance is dynamite. Her family rejects her, the English press celebrates her as a sensation, whilst on the internet there are death threats. The situation gets serious. And yet also funnier. And quite different from what people now think.  

Anthony McCarten has now created a dramatisation of his explosive multicultural social  novel for a première in the Salzburg State Theatre. This involved an intensive collaboration with the New Zealand author of »The Theory of Everything« (»Die Entdeckung der Unendlichkeit«) who was nominated as best screenplay writer in the 2015 Oscars.

McCarten’s plea for an understanding of cultures, for freedom of the individual and for freedom of art are the key points of »The bright light of freedom« and therefore for all current efforts to create a fairer sense of togetherness and tolerance.

(Translated from the German by Mike Mackenzie-Smith)

Duration: approx. 2 hours 30 mins / includ. one intermission