Playwright Zahida Rahemtulla knows what it’s like finding homes for refugees in a city gripped with sky-high housing prices. She actually did this work in Vancouver back in 2016 just as the Canadian government was resettling 44,000 Syrian refugees over a 14-month period.
In a Zoom interview with Pancouver, Rahemtulla recalled how generous members of the community responded. Sometimes, they would drop off a dinner to the refugees’ hotel. Others invited a refugee family to live in their home until they found their footing in Canada.
“A lot of those informal supports are so important and so memorable,” Rahemtulla says. “There is so much work that’s done through community.”
She noticed that help often came from people with lived experience as newcomers to Canada. At the same time, Rahemtulla witnessed the difficulties of moving lots of refugees through the resettlement process in a compressed period of time. She drew on those experiences in her latest play, The Frontliners, which will have its world premiere later this week at the Firehall Arts Centre.
“It’s about three settlement workers who are stationed at a place called Hotel Splendid,” Rahemtulla says. “They have to navigate…bureaucracy and time pressure from all different sides to try to find homes and settle families under pretty impossible government timelines.”
Derek Chan (陳嘉昊) is directing The Frontliners, which stars Janavi Chawla, Francis Dolatabadi, and Adrian Neblett. Like Rahemtulla’s last play, The Wrong Bashir, there are plenty of comedic elements within a dramatic envelope. In The Frontliners, she touches upon class, race, and the complexity of privilege between equity-seeking groups.
The Frontliners won New Play Prize
Rahemtulla points out that first-generation, adult immigrants face challenges not experienced by the second generation, including accent discrimination. In addition, newcomers don’t always understand unspoken norms in workplaces, which leaves them vulnerable to exploitation.
“People who come and have to learn these systems as adults are also navigating financial instability,” Rahemtulla notes.
She hopes that people will honour the experiences of both the first and second generations while recognizing some of the different obstacles in their way.
Rahemtulla began writing The Frontliners in 2019 when she was part of the Arts Club Theatre’s emerging playwrights unit. She developed it further over two years at the Playwrights Theatre Centre (PTC) with dramaturgy and production mentorship from Davey Calderon. A workshop production won the New Play Prize at the Vancouver Fringe Festival.
In those years, Rahemtulla began working with cultural consultants with deep insights into the Syrian diasporic experience. She already knew Farouk Alsajee, a singer and composer of Iraqi descent, with whom she had worked in the nonprofit sector.
“He plays the oud and he trained in Damascus for music,” Rahemtulla states. “As he says, he’s a twice displaced refugee.”
According to Rahemtulla, Alsajee went from war-torn Iraq to Syria, then came to Canada to escape the Syrian civil war. The PTC asked Alsajee to design an original music score for The Frontliners, pairing him with soundscape artist, musician, and composer Ruby Singh. Both received a credit for original composition.
Rahemtulla was also a colleague of a second cultural consultant, Majd Agha, when she was helping refugees resettle in Canada in 2016. The Silk Road Institute, which offers a platform for Muslim voices, brought Rahemtulla in contact with a third cultural consultant, Oussayma Canbarieh.
“She worked as a translator and interpreter during 2016,” Rahemtulla says. “She’s also a journalist.”
Public talk with cultural consultants
A fourth cultural consultant, Aya Adra, is an Ismaili Muslim living in Syria. Rahemtulla met her while working on a project serving the Somali community. And another cultural consultant, Aksam Alyousef, was a prominent playwright, journalist, director, and producer in Syria before he resettled in Edmonton in 2016.
The director, Chan, will facilitate a public conversation between Rahemtulla and the cultural consultants at 1:30 p.m. on May 4 on the second floor of the Firehall Arts Centre. That will be followed by a matinee performance at 3 p.m.
After Rahemtulla wrote her last play, The Wrong Bashir, she said it was difficult to find older Ismaili actors to play the roles of first-generation immigrants from East Africa. Older Ismaili immigrants told her that they never conceived of becoming actors in Canada. Rahemtulla is intrigued that Alyoussef, on the other hand, has created opportunities for Syrian refugees to learn about acting.
“He made a program for Syrians in Edmonton because he found the same thing that I was having: there isn’t enough actors,” Rahemtulla says. “His wife is an actor and the two of them, with another partner, brought people in. They trained them and had them on the stage for the first time.”
The Firehall Arts Centre, Blackout Art Society, and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre will present the world premiere of The Frontliners from Thursday (May 1) to May 11. For tickets and more information, visit the Firehall Arts Centre website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social. Also find Pancouver on Instagram @PancouverMedia. Follow Charlie Smith on Bluesky @charliesmithvcr.bsky.social.
