Bhangra Nation at Birmingham Rep

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Sat 17 Feb 2024 - Sat 16 Mar 2024

Director Stafford Arima was in his office in Canada leafing through scripts when he came across a new musical focusing on college students caught up in the world of bhangra competitions. Turning the pages, he entered a whirlwind of dance, music, drama, colour, identity, friendship and rivalry – and knew immediately this was a show he wanted to be involved in.

That musical, originally called Bhangin’ It, was premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in spring 2022 to audience acclaim. And this spring the show, which has since been re-developed and re-named Bhangra Nation, has its UK premiere at Birmingham Rep.



Stafford, who is the artistic director of Theatre Calgary as well as an independent director, can’t wait to share the show with Birmingham and UK audiences. “I was invited by the producers and the creative team just before the production happened at the La Jolla Playhouse,” he recalls. “I was sent a script with some demos. I read so many scripts, not just as a director but also as an artistic director, and sometimes you open it up and by the tenth page you’re running off to get a little snack but this script was a page-turner, I couldn’t stop reading it. And then listening to this incredible score I was tapping my feet, I was bouncing in my chair and I just thought to myself this is something brand new, really exciting and I want to be a part of it.”

He was keen to be part of the production. “I called the producers and said, ‘if I can, I want to make this happen’. I had a wonderful experience at the La Jolla Playhouse, learnt a lot about the show in so many ways and now we all feel even more equipped coming to Birmingham and delivering the show in a really creative and invigorating way.”

Written by Rehana Lew Mirza and Mike Lew, with music and lyrics by Sam Willmott and choreography by Rujuta Vaidya, Bhangra Nation takes us into the sphere of collegiate bhangra competitions in which different college teams vie to take the dance crown. But when two students, Mary and Preeti, have different ideas of how to gain the top prize, the competition becomes about so much more than dance.

Stafford explains: “The musical pays a little homage to some of those classic American tropes of the high school battling cheerleading type of competition and where bhangra competition in the collegiate world in the United States is very strong. Bhangra Nation is an exhilarating, colourful, brand new musical that gives an audience an inside look into the world of competitive bhangra collegiate festivities.”

And you don’t need to be a bhangra expert to appreciate the show. “I have been asked if you can still enjoy the musical if you don’t know bhangra and the answer is definitely yes,” says Stafford. “It’s a fun, fast-paced, heartfelt musical that celebrates identity, celebrates bhangra and celebrates the search for figuring out who you are. At the core of this musical is a story about how you fit in. I think, no matter if you are British, South Asian, Canadian or whatever, we all struggle on so many levels on how to fit into the world these days.”

By focusing on the two students and their different ideals of dance, Bhangra Nation explores how we see ourselves and how we view others. “In the show there’s a beautiful hybridity of tradition and modernity and how those two worlds work,” Stafford says. “Basically the world is set up where we have Mary, the bi-racial student who wants to bring in lots of different dance forms into the bhangra competition, and then we have Preeti who is 100 per cent South Asian and feels bhangra should be presented in a very traditional form. So how do these two worlds meet? Well they clash, and as a result of that clash, they discover what bhangra is. So is it modern, is it tradition, is it both, can both exist, what’s right, what’s wrong, who’s right, who’s wrong?”

Music and dance sit at the heart of the production. “If there are audiences out there who love musicals they will love this show,” says Stafford. “Sometimes we even call it a ‘dancical’ because there is so much music and dancing in the show. And it’s not just bhangra dancing, we have other forms of traditional South Asian dancing such as kathak, and we also have some good old musical theatre, jazz dancing and hip-hop.”



Bhangra Nation has been developed since it was first premiered in America, taking the show onto its next step and will feature local actors, dancers and singers. “The authors have really evolved it - it’s stronger, it’s clearer, it’s defined in a more potent way,” says Stafford. “What we are presenting now is in many ways brand new. And it’s so exciting to really feel a community of artists that are coming together – we have performers from Birmingham, we have designers from the West End and from the regions in the UK, we have designers from New York, we have a director who is Canadian, writers who are American, and we have this incredible institution called the Birmingham Rep that is housing this crazy quilt of diversity.”

And he adds: “It excites me that we’re pulling from the community of Birmingham but also introducing to the community of Birmingham new faces and new voices. We’re making it a big kind of soup of different ingredients from different places. Sometimes we’re on these Zooms and the choreographer is in India and the director is in Canada and the writers are in America and then there’s the Rep in Birmingham. I just marvel at that worldliness and they are all going to descend into Birmingham and have a creative space to put this new musical on that stage.”

Bhangra Nation plays Birmingham Rep between February 17 and March 16, see www.birmingham-rep.co.uk for more information and tickets.

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