'Handful of Henna' by Rani Moorthy
UK Tour: 28 January - May 2010

An evocative and enchanting story of homecoming, adventure, fear and joy for a girl and her mother. For the first time since she was a girl, Saheeda is returning to her family village for a wedding. She takes along her teenage daughter Nasreen who is intensely annoyed at being away from her friends in England. For Nasreen this is a place of mixed messages. A land that is part eulogized, but never fully spoken about. Where money is sent back to, but never visited. Where letters sent across the globe forge few bonds across the generations.

Back in the family home, Saheeda begins to connect with her past life, and stories of her time as a girl, both happy and sad are re-enacted. Nasreen discovers a life of her mother's that had never been revealed: running in the fields; trips to the sea; a grand imaginary feast at Ramadan; smoking her grandmother’s hookah…Then suddenly these happy times were shattered when Saheeda’s mother died and her father remarried. After cutting her stepmothers’ clothes to shreds, she was sent away to live with relatives, before eventually being married off to a man in England. A marriage doomed to fail.

As mother and daughter begin to share the family history, Saheeda, just like her own mother did to her, rubs henna into Nasreen’s hands to ward off evil spirits and nightmares. She tells her daughter how she created a secret garden in her mind to bury all her dreams. Once sarcastic and unbelieving, Nasreen now realises she must rub henna in her mothers hands. Whilst in England Nasreen complained that her mother did not understand her, now she realises that she had not tried to understand her mother, and knew nothing of the secrets and stories that shape her character.

As the wedding celebrations commence, a newfound understanding is forged between mother and daughter, and brash Nasreen shows she has sensitivity and compassion.

Mothers and Daughters

With warm humour and moving drama, Handful of Henna aims to address some of the complexities of mother/daughter relationships. However unlike many plays addressing this relationship, Handful of Henna creates a well-rounded and complicated mother, lifting the parent character from the stereotypical role as a backdrop or oppressor to her child.

Through a narrative driven by multidimensional and flawed characters, we see how Saheeda’s childhood helped shape her later life in England and her relationship with her daughter. It examines how mothers need to be understood by there daughters as much as how daughters need to be understood by the mothers. It aims to show that whatever age people are, they have secrets, hopes and fears, and by understanding these across the generations a new empathy can be found in family relationships.

By being both entertaining and emotionally engaging, the universal relationship at the heart of Rani Moorthy’s play encourages an audience to reflect on there own view of family relationships and loyalties, whatever there cultural or ethnic background.

Inspired by true stories

Handful of Henna was originally commissioned and produced by Sheffield Crucible as part of the city’s Children’s Festival. Written as a response to community workshops with a mixed age group of Muslim women, the play received two performances on the main stage of the Crucible in June 2006, with a cast of two professional actors and a chorus drawn from the Asian community. In this re-written version of the play four actresses create a bustling, colourful world bursting with music, dance and family celebration.