Dugsi Dayz: Different Times Call for Different Tales

Munira: That’s haram you know. You can’t ignore a Muslim sister especially when she salaams you.
Hani: You didn’t even salaam me!
Munira: Assalamu’alaikum sis.
Hani: Wa alaikum assalam SIS.

‘Dugsi Dayz’ shines a light on the world of four British-Somali teenage girls held in Saturday detention at their Islamic school (Dugsi) in south-west London. A splendid play by Sabrina Ali, it was inspired by the 1985 movie ‘The Breakfast Club’. (Running at the Royal Court, London until 18 May, it certainly deserves a transfer.)

The girls’ Teacher (Macalin) has not turned up to invigilate, and so we watch them - shoes-off, bored and restless - as they bicker, debate and mess around to pass the time. Munira is the class joker - smart, eccentric and cheeky. Hani is cool, mysterious and aloof, quietly making notes in her journal. Yasmin, with bouncy curls popping out of her hijab, is obsessed with make-up, fashion and her phone. And finally there is Salma, the class swot in a black jilbab, diligently studying her copy of Islamic Reminders for Sisters, encouraging the others to reflect on their mistakes.

Salma: Seriously, Munira, music in a mosque?
Munira: It’s a podcast! What happened to assuming the best?

The girls speculate on what each of them has done to merit detention. They rummage amongst the confiscated items kept in the Macalin’s desk drawer.  They impersonate and poke fun at each other.

Yasmin: Dyslexia is not funny, Salma.
Munira: You’re not only mocking me, Salma, but a lot of great people. Einstein…Tom Cruise, Rosa Parks, Celine Dion.

We learn that, when they were younger, the girls’ mothers kept them in check by telling tales of fearsome long-eared Dhegodeer, who preys on badly behaved children; or the demonic Monkey Girl, who would come after them if they spent too much time listening to music, or if they threw the Quran on the floor.

Munira proposes that current teenage cohorts need new myths to help them navigate contemporary challenges.

Munira: I’ve realised, there’s like no scary Somali folk stories for the next generation of kids… Like for the younger kids… We need some hair raising, blood curdling …We need to basically pass on the torch.

Whilst conservative Salma thinks that youngsters should be warned about lack of respect, wearing excessive make-up and spending too much time on TikTok, the other girls have different perils in mind.

Yasmin: I say we should warn kids about things we wish we knew when we were younger.

Yasmin invents a story about an intelligent, beautiful, high-achieving girl who falls for a young man with ‘dazzling bling, a charming smile and spell-binding cologne.' The chap turns out to be a hopeless good-for-nothing.

Yasmin: She spent most of her time studying, so she didn’t have any experience dating or spotting red flags…The sweet musk he carried was gone and was replaced by the smell of old socks and BO.

Munira’s yarn features a spirited, independent teenager, not unlike herself. One night, when waiting at a bus stop, she is attacked by two sharp-toothed vampire aunties in long flowing jilbabs, who ‘sweep across the floor with a natural grace and swiftness, you would think they were on hoverboards.’

Munira: Don’t trust Somali aunties, cause they’re vampires who want to suck the life and soul out of you…I’m warning the girls of the next generation to run for their life if they ever see them blood-sucking vampires.

‘Dugsi Dayz’ is a tender, insightful, funny play, celebrating a community whose perspective is rarely seen; whose voice is seldom heard.

Popcorn Writing Award 2023 winner Sabrina Ali, for her play Dugsi Dayz

I was quite taken with its suggestion that different times require different tales.

I entered the world of work in the late 1980s, when corporate folk lore commended long hours, shareholder capitalism, winning-at-all cost  and a dog-eat-dog mentality. It was a fairly aggressive, muscular culture.

Surely young people joining today’s workplace need to hear about a new kind of heroism: stories of interdependence and the triple bottom line; of creativity and collaboration; of emotional intelligence and resilience.

By the end of the play, the four characters have grown closer, through shared laughter and storytelling. They are released to go their separate ways.

Salma: So wait, what? Does this mean we’re like friends now?
Munira: This isn’t The Breakfast Club, Salma. We’ll see you next Saturday in Dugsi.

'I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was stronger.’

The Faces, ‘Ooh La La’ (R Lane / R Wood)

No. 459

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 5

‘Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go’

Bernardo: ‘Who’s there?’
Francisco: ‘Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.’
Hamlet, I i.

Some have argued that the opening lines of Hamlet are entirely appropriate: this night-time exchange between two guards on the walls of the castle at Elsinore immediately establishes a sense of doubt about identity, a theme that sustains us through the play.

In a bold break with tradition, the director of the Hamlet currently being staged at The Barbican in London chose instead to start her production with the famous ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. Too bold for some, and it was announced last week that the experiment would be discontinued.

Should one side with the purists and demand respect for genius and tradition? Or should one applaud brave endeavour, even when it doesn’t succeed?

I found that, the longer I was in business, the more I had to guard against instinctive conservatism. ‘We’ve tried that before. It didn’t work.’ Age and experience can at once enhance one’s judgement and diminish one’s appetite for change.

I saw the Barbican Hamlet in preview. Benedict Cumberbatch has a strong, charismatic take on the troubled Prince; the sets are magnificent; and the production has many good ideas.

When you revisit great works, different scenes leap out at you. This time I was struck by the passage in which Hamlet’s uncle, the villainous Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet’s father and married his widow, tries to pray for forgiveness. At length Claudius concedes that, since he is still in possession of ‘my crown, mine own ambition and my queen,’ he cannot hope for absolution. His prayers are empty without genuine remorse.

‘My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.’
Hamlet III, iii

Creative businesses are sadly cursed by hollow words and empty promises. We all too publicly worship at the altar of creativity without properly demonstrating our faith in day-to-day behaviour. Talk is cheap. And our belief is sorely tested when the god Mammon steps into the meeting room. Perhaps we should, like Claudius, appreciate that ‘words without thoughts never to heaven go.’

Scepticism Is Healthy for Business Too

Trouble in Paradise is a sophisticated screwball comedy from 1932, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. A romance between two upmarket con artists is tested when one of them falls for a society heiress, their next intended victim.

The film is fast paced, knowing and wry. And so beautifully written. The society heiress, Madame Colet, rejects a suitor’s advances thus:

‘You see, Francois, marriage is a beautiful mistake which two people make together. But with you, Francois, it would be a mistake.’

It’s reassuring to discover that scepticism about advertising and business was alive and well in the ‘30s. Madame Colet has inherited a perfume business and her brand is advertised thus:

‘Remember, it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter how you look. It’s how you smell.’

In another scene Giron, the Chairman of the Board of Colet et Cie, confronts our hero Gaston, now acting as Madame Colet’s advisor:
Giron:  ‘Speaking for the Board of Directors as well as for myself, if you insist in times like these in cutting the fees of the Board of Directors, then we resign.’
Gaston:  ‘Speaking for Madame Colet as well as for myself, resign.’
Giron:  'Very well…We’ll think it over...’

I understand that in this month’s Alphabet announcement there was a nod to the HBO comedy Silicon Valley (The Guardian, 11 Aug 2015). There’s a great tradition of comic writing about commercial culture. The Office reflected business life as it is, not as we would want it to be. Nathan Barley shone a light on Shoreditch lunacy, with extraordinary prescience and what now looks like understatement. And the recently departed comic genius, David Nobbs, gave us Reggie Perrin, the middle management mid-life crisis that is sadly all too familiar.

Scepticism is healthy. It calls business to account. It shows that the public is alert to our shortcomings.
Better to be mocked than to be ignored.

Can Commerce Integrate Art and Science?

The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Macon by JMW Turner shows ordinary folk dancing in a beautiful bucolic scene. A few years ago research was published indicating that Turner’s depiction of the sun in this painting was based on the latest scientific thinking of his day. (The Guardian, 13 November 2011)

It transpires that Turner, whilst studying art at the Royal Academy, also attended science debates at the Royal Society, which was housed in the same building. And in particular it is suggested that Turner attended the lectures of the astronomer William Herschel, who had been examining the surface of the sun.

As an artist Turner was comfortable with, and actively interested in, science. The scientist Michael Faraday was a good friend and he knew mathematicians, palaeontologists and chemists. Science inspired him. His commitment to observe nature first hand is captured in the myth that he lashed himself to a mast during a storm, just so that he could understand the conditions; an experience that supposedly prompted my favourite Turner painting, Snow Storm - Steam Boat Off A Harbour’s Mouth. 

I regret to say that, when I grew up, art and science were taught as polar opposites. We imagined that scientists had different shaped brains and we rarely socialised with them. This dualism extended even to our TV viewing: the scientists watched The Body in Question; we arts scholars watched Brideshead Revisited (the show that launched a thousand fops)…

It’s compelling to note that many of today’s more interesting movies, dance and theatre productions concern themselves with science. The Theory of Everything had us trying to keep up with Stephen Hawking; the great Wayne McGregor creates dance inspired by neuroscience; Nick Payne’s recent Royal Court hit, Constellations, looked at a human relationship in the context of quantum multiverse theory.

Though I’ve barely a scientific sinew in my body, I believe that the future of marketing and communications will occur at the intersection between art and science. It’s logical. It's inspiring.

No. 44