When Will I See You Again

This was a piece that was originally created during the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab in 2020, but due to the time constraints of getting a play together, Sanjay decided to pause the idea.

Inspired by one of his favourite songs from the 1970s Girlgroup The Three Degrees, this songs lyrics were quite powerful and from there he came up with the idea for a play that looked at themes of mental health, leaving the justice system, being queer in south asian culture in the UK.

As the piece wasn’t written during the Writers’ Lab, in 2022 Sanjay was selected to be apart of the Traverse Theatre’s Inaugural Creating Space Writers Group. This was a group where 10 POC writers were chosen to create a new play or develop an idea an idea they already had.

The Writers group was led by writer and producer Mariem Omari (who was Sanjay’s mentor during his 3rd year professional placement) and director and dramaturg Shilpa T-Hyland. And over the 10 weeks we developed our plays and were visited by Writers and creatives in the Scottish Theatre Industry.

The guests were: Gareth Nichols, Hannah Lavery, Kieran Hurley, Apphia Campbell, Nicola McCartney, Tawona Sithole and Maryam Hamidi.

Sanjay was also lucky to have a 1-1 mentored session with Artistic Director Gareth Nichols about his play, which he was really grateful for as Gareth gave feedback that Sanjay hadn’t thought about.

The end of the programme was invited actors came to read a 10 minute extracts of each persons play. The actors who performed my three characters were James Dawoud, Atta Yaqub and Lubna Kerr.

The play now is being slowly developed and shared with artists to gain some feedback and the writers group have all kept in touch.