Outcaste

Octagon Theatre, Bolton with Avin Shah presents

, boasting centuries of warrior tradition. Yasmin, an illiterate Untouchable, tries to escape the brutal repression of the Hindu caste system, by converting to Islam. But her blasphemous act causes outrage within a hostile community. Forming a taboo alliance with an ostracized Brahmin woman, the two women manage to earn a living, becoming unlikely recruiters for the War in Europe.

Yet even their struggle for survival breaks society’s rigid conventions and reignites old feuds. The village elders can no longer tolerate Yasmin’s transgressions and decide to crush her...

At the outbreak of the First World War, thousands of men left their villages in Northern India to fight for glory. Outcaste is about the forgotten lives of the women they left behind to fend for themselves. Exploring freedom of religion and its repression, illiteracy and superstition, class and hierarchies, censorship and prejudice, Outcaste tells the story of a young woman’s attempt to find her place in a society that rejects her.

Outcaste by Avin Shah (BBC Radio 4’s Tommies) is a play for the theatre, initially conceived with support from Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Outcaste was further developed by the Finborough Theatre, it was performed as a public reading at Vibrant 2017 - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights.

To commemorate the WWI Centenary in 2014, Avin Shah wrote and produced the Radio Drama Podcast, Subterranean Sepoys for Tara Arts, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.