Sami Ibrahim on A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain

Sami Ibrahim isn't looking for answers. "In terms of why I write," he says, "I don't think I'm interested in writing stories where I have a clear answer. I'm always drawn to stories where there's a question or some sort of knot at the centre of it that I can't quite unpick." In his upcoming Fringe Festival offering with Paines Plough, A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, Ibrahim foregos realism in favour of fable to tell the story of a mother and daughter experiencing the same journey in vastly different ways.

Ibrahim says: "It's hard not to think about, especially with the Shamima Begum case, and the cases of people being stripped of citizenship, and stories about the hostile environment. It's hard not to think about our immigration system and citizenship." 

While immigration and hostile environments make up the subject matter of A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, the story is, at its heart, a fairytale about family. Ibrahim says, "I just started working out the idea and starting out in this fairytale world felt like a really fun way – a strange or unusual way – into telling a story about migration that is normally told in quite a down-to-earth, realist way. It felt exciting to try to get into it from a different angle and try and explore things that I didn't feel were normally explored in those kinds of stories." In the play, a mother must attempt to explain what it means to live as a migrant in a hostile environment to her daughter. 

"At its heart, it's about a mum. The fairytale element comes from the main character trying to explain the situation that she's stuck in to her daughter. That fairytale becomes a means of speaking to her daughter and trying to explain things to her. And the play is about the daughter believing and unravelling that story, and that felt like the way in – the little snapshot to tell a bigger story about citizenship and nation."

Ibrahim isn't interested in suffering for its own sake. As international borders become even more difficult to traverse and one's right to citizenship becomes increasingly tenuous, Ibrahim is looking more and more for play and imagination. "I think the whimsy was there from the off," he says, "It felt built into the story. As the play goes on, you end up kind of stripping back those fairytale layers. It's sort of a narrated fairytale that dips into naturalism for some moments and then goes back to this fairytale-like world. The fairytale world felt like the starting point, and it felt like the best way in."

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain deals most broadly about "handing things down from one generation to the next….The questions I did have were about worth and sacrifice, about what has to be given in order to become a citizen, and what that means. What is worth it?" Ibrahim talks about the "assumptions you make about what you're losing out on in order to pass something on to the next generation. What if that next generation doesn't want the thing you're passing on?" 

Ibrahim frames migration as a family issue, in addition to a geopolitical one. He says that family "became the crux of the story, and the heart of it is these two characters, a mum and daughter, having two different experiences of the same journey and not being able to sit on the same page."

In an environment where it can feel complicated to address the issues that affect us, Ibrahim stresses the importance of making these stories feel personal. "I always enjoy using day-to-day politics as a jumping off point. Then the exciting bit for me is trying to heighten that or find an unusual way in, a back door into those stories that can sometimes be jarring or exciting, or sometimes just a bit odd or whimsical or magical. And it feels like a way of shifting an audience – a) telling an unexpected story and b) getting an audience to engage in a different way." In asking the audience to think of this story of migration not just as a sweeping political commentary, but as an intimate, heartfelt, and imaginative interaction between a mother and her daughter, Ibrahim illuminates how a hostile environment has lasting, intergenerational effects. 

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a reminder of the lengths some of us must go to just to live a 'normal life' – and how the aftershocks of those efforts affect our communities.

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A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, Summerhall (Roundabout), 3-27 Aug (not 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23), £12-15