Dear friends,

Welcome to our November newsletter.

Ten Years East

With A Season of Bangla Drama nearing its halfway point, and our next show, Ten Years East, just over a week away, we’d like to tell you more about the exciting line-up we have brought together for you.

Farah Naz is a poet and Deputy Director of The British Bilingual Poetry Collective. She was part of the original East group, and some of her stories can be seen on our East Archive, as can John Heyderman’s remarkable story of his father’s escape from Nazi Germany: Two Gold Rings. John will be sharing a Jewish story, and Farah will tell a tale from the Muslim tradition.

Our two lead storytellers, both of whom have been at the heart of the East project since the start, will also be performing. Shamim Azad is a highly celebrated writer, poet and storyteller here in East London and in Bangladesh, while Sef Townsend, an internationally acclaimed storyteller, has told stories around the world, from refugee camps to festivals. They will be joined by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, Daedalus’s assistant director and producer. Tasnim is a theatremaker, critic and artist, and has a script-reading of one of her own plays later today as part of the festival programme: Knotted.