Post-Show Talk Announced For BISMILLAH! At VAULT Festival

Coming to London after a barnstorming, critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2015, Wound Up Theatre's Bismillah! An ISIS Tragicomedy, now has its London debut at VAULT Festival this Spring, exploring the strange new reality of youth in modern day Britain and examining social alienation, radicalisation, disenfranchisement and the rock band Queen.

Straight after the performance on Wednesday February 28th, there will be 30 minute talk in which Dr Sarah Ilott discusses ways in which comedy works to take the terror out of terrorism by opening up a topic often discussed only in panicked and hyperbolic terms by the mainstream press. Sarah considers how addressing social taboos - around terrorism and Islamophobia - enables comedies to challenge stereotypes, laugh off fears, and create new communities based on shared laughter at flawed systems. Sarah discusses Bismillah! alongside other recent film and TV comedies that represent Muslims in subversive ways, before interviewing Matthew Greenhough about some of the research he did and decisions he made as a playwright.

Sarah is a lecturer in literature and film at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of New Postcolonial British Genres and the editor (with Dr Helen Davies) of a forthcoming collection on Comedy and the Politics of Representation. She has published widely in the area of comedy studies, both in academic publications and in The Conversation.

Bismillah! stormed the Fringe during its critically acclaimed run at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival. It was listed for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and was endorsed by Nihal Arthanayake on the BBC Asian Network. Since its Fringe run, the show has been in development with Sevan Greene at London's Theatre Royal Stratford East. VAULT Festival marks the show's London theatrical debut.

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