Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti interview

By Dominic Cavendish 525PM GMT twelve Mar 2010

Rehearsals for Behud at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti refuses to have her sketch taken for this paper. Shes not being formidable - the reason for her warding off is simple. Shes the bard obliged for Behzti (Dishonour) which, famously, caused a demonstration at the Birmingham Rep in 2004.

Incensed by her preference to set her fool around in a Sikh church - a gurdwara - and for presenting it as a basement of iniquity, abundant with congenital passionate abuse - hundreds of Sikh protestors collected on multiform uninterrupted nights to voice their annoy prior to attempting to charge the entertainment on Saturday Dec 18.

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Windows were smashed, arrests were made, Bhatti - already the theme of aroused threats - was forced to go in to hiding, and the productions run was at once cancelled.

This shocking, astonishing episode, forlorn in complicated British theatre, became a means celebre and serves as a chilling painting of how frail leisure of debate can be.

Five years on, Bhatti stays understandably heedful about being simply identified. And nonetheless the smart, petite Asian lady who meets me in a executive London cafeteria couldnt be serve from the quiet or chastened figure one competence have expected. Revisiting the tale for the initial time in a inhabitant newspaper, the 41-year-old playwright comes opposite as quiet, courteous and, on top of all, all defiant.

"Id do it again," she says, firmly, roughly matter-of-factly. "I wouldnt think twice about it. Behzti was the fool around I longed for to write. I regularly believed in what Id done."

She has directed transparent of media interviews until now, she explains, given she longed for to get on with her hold up and work, building projects for TV, movie and radio. "I had to do that. Im a human being, not a controversy."

She realised Behzti was provocative - up to a point "Im from a Sikh background. I knew it would be controversial, but I dont think theres anything wrong with inspiring people."

She saw zero in her sacrament that taboo her from environment the fool around in a gurdwara. "I didnt expect the turn of criticism - the demonstrations, the riot. I never thought it would get to the point where it would be pulled."

Theres no snippet of self-pity in all this. "I dont feel similar to a victim," she says. "Im not observant I wasnt influenced by the experience, or usually sailed by it, but I put myself in the firing-line. You have to understanding with the consequences."

As a pointer of how unbowed she is, Behud, her initial fool around to be staged given Behzti, and a fool around without delay connected with the controversy, receives the premiere subsequent week at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.

The pretension Behud - a Punjabi word that translates as "without limits", some-more colloquially "beyond belief" - reflects the surreal inlet of the experience. "It mostly felt similar to a dream," she recalls. "Some of what happened was even utterly funny."

Events have been fictionalised and upheld by an initial filter. She wanted, she says, to examine the implications of one of the slogans on a protesters ensign - "Shame On Sikh Playwright For Her Corrupt Imagination". "The fool around is about that "corrupt" imagination. Do you bury whats in your head, sanitize it?"

Behzti, she entirely admits, was a work of imagination, not reportage. Its storyline of abuse was done up. "Some people ask if it hasnt happened or if it doesnt happen, because would you write it? But where do you stop with that argument? Are we usually authorised to write word for word headlines reports? Behzti was an story for hypocrisy. And I longed for it to be an impassioned allegory, so I set it in a gurdwara."

Is she aroused that her follow-up will re-ignite the old fury? "Is it similar to on foot behind in to the fire? Yes, but I think I have to do that. Theres no approach turn it. I dont wish to be great but my fool around was pulled. Ive got a right to see at that, speak about that."

For those girding themselves to be angry anew, though, she has this to contend "Being annoyed by things is piece of being human. Its piece of life. You cant strengthen yourself from it. People have got to begin removing a bit some-more robust."

Behud runs at the Belgrade, Coventry (024 76555 30055), Mar twenty-seven to Apr twenty afterwards at Soho Theatre, London W1 (020 7478 0100), Apr thirteen to May 8.