The headline is a quote from late in the second half of Zaiba Baig’s double header Kainchee Lagaa + Jhooti: The Begging Brown Bitch Plays which opened on Thursday night at Buddies in Bad Times in a production directed by Tawiah Ben M’Carthy for House of Beida Inc.  The plays are loosely linked in that both deal one way or another with queerness and Pakistani-Canadian identity and experience.

In Kainchee Lagaan (Like Scissors) we meet Billo (Angel Glady); a sex worker somewhere in Pakistan.  We get brightly lit vignettes of what goes on in her very basic apartment including her interactions with customers.  From the beginning the barrier between stage and audience is dissolved.  Billo addresses us directly; asking questions, even begging for money.  It’s very funny.

In parallel, we meet her brother Arsalan (Praneet Akilla) who was sent to his granny in Canada at age ten.  He has saved up for a trip to Pakistan to meet his sister who he has tracked down on social media.  He also has to deal with granny who appears as a bundle dragged around by Arsalan; his emotional baggage perhaps.  Initially all of Arsalan’s scenes happen on a gantry so we are switching back and forth between sister at stage level ad brother “upstairs”.  It starts to get weird when an airport security guard (played by Xina, who also plays Billo’s customers, a rickshaw driver etc) swallows the scissors Arsalan is taking to his sister as a present.  “Who the fuck eats scissors”.

Eventually Arsalan arrives in Pakistan (at stage level) and goes off to find his sister who has just dramatically vomited up the scissors.  She is preparing to leave for Islamabad along with a young boy (who doesn’t actually exist) and is apparently not expecting Arsalan. A disturbing history of possible sexual abuse comes up and Arsalan fakes an accident, as a result of which he forces his sister to cut his shirt off with the scissors.  But ultimately they fail to bond despite Tandoori chicken and Fanta.  Arsalan accompanies his sister to the train station.

It’s never clear what’s “real” and what’s “fantasy” or whether the fantasy is for our benefit or the characters. The relationship between stage and audience is stylized.  “What are you laughing at?” etc.  It’s kaleidoscopic, ambiguous, unsettling and often very, very funny.  And you could probably writer a PhD dissertation on what scissors “mean” here.

Which leads us to Jhooti which is a one woman show by the playwright.  It too is very much in two halves.  I n the first part Baig plays a very Pakistani woman, Zakeena, (strong accent, dodgy gramma) who is being chased by someone who wants to “chop” her.  A long disquisition on dismemberment follows coupled with a plea for the audience to save her.  More information about being a poet who embroiders shirts in a factory follows.  All of this is interspersed with Bollywood dance numbers.  It’s weirdly funny.

Then she breaks character.  The accent is gone.  The grammar is standard.  She explains the Bollywood numbers as an opportunity to shake her trans titties.  Then it gets weirder and darker.  She tells us that the whole story is a lie and that she’s not even trans.  We laugh (of course we do).  And then there’s the outburst “What do I have to do to get some disrespect around here?”.

And it turns out that that is to show up in a suicide bomber vest.  Because, as she tells us, as a brown/Muslim woman of course she is a terrorist and her father was a terrorist and her children will be terrorists.  It’s pretty disturbing.  The play closes with Zakeena (if it is Zakeena) lying on her back on an otherwise darkened stage activating the flashing light on the vest and making beeping noises.  Like so much of what has come before it’s rather horrifying and very funny.

Whatever one thinks of the concept, the execution is undeniably excellent.  The acting is terrific and the set designs (Rachel Forbes) work really well.  A lot of the tension and ambiguity is provided by very clever lighting (André du Toit).  The sound design (Dasha Plett) is also critical and it’s enhanced by a lot of original pre-recorded music by a whole raft of musicians and techs.  It’s just very well crafted theatre.

Kainchee Lagaa + Jhooti is highly experimental, sweary and, to use one of Buddies’ boss ted witzel’s favourite words “filthy”.  It’s the sort of show that only really Buddies in Bad Times does.  Whether that’s your thing is not for me to say.  The show continues until April 18th.

Photo credit: Jeremy Mimnagh