When the Iran-born cookery book author Atoosa Sepehr first met Hannah Khalil, the playwright tasked with bringing her life to the London stage, the women found plenty of common ground. But there was one thing, above all, that bonded the two: “We spent most of the time talking about food,” says Khalil. The pair are joining me on a video call as their play My English Persian Kitchen – inspired by Sepehr’s journey from Iran to Britain and the cooking from home that helped her plant new roots – enters its first week of rehearsals.
In fact, it was over a Zoom call in 2021 that they had that first meeting. Soho theatre’s David Luff had read Sepehr’s story, of fleeing overseas in 2007 to escape her bad marriage, in the Guardian. With a husband unprepared to grant her a divorce, and without the power to obtain one herself, she left almost overnight, with just an hour’s window before he would block the documents that would allow her to leave the country.
Once in the UK, alone in a north London flat and missing home, she called the women in her family in Iran, and began painstakingly recreating the recipes she was raised on, devoting four years to perfecting the dishes of old Persia. It delivered purpose and community as her neighbours were spellbound by the smells emanating from her small kitchen. Then came a bestselling cookbook, From a Persian Kitchen, after Sepehr gave up work in the import-export business that had sponsored her move, in order to turn her recipes into something lasting. Luff knew that this story of crossing borders, and food as an anchor to home, was a global one that would lend itself to the stage. “It’s a story of hope,” says Sepehr, 47. “Like a rebirth, starting again and not letting the past dominate you.”
Associating cooking with domesticity – the very thing society expected of her – meant she had previously ignored this creative pull: “My whole life I tried to suppress part of me. I never took notice of it because I wanted to be recognised in my society as someone equal to a man. The last thing I wanted to do was be in the kitchen and cook.”
Being forced to restart her life, abroad, at 30, changed that: “When I came to this country, everything happened so quickly. There was a sense of worry. I knew my husband wouldn’t give me a divorce so it would be a long time until I could go back home. Cooking was the one thing that gave me comfort, a sense of getting back to life. It was calming and giving me focus.”
She would travel across London to source ingredients after work and wake early to cook, sometimes preparing recipes 20 times to get them right. This is all material that shapes the new one-woman show that opened on the Edinburgh fringe last month. Inspired by Sepehr’s life, rather than an exact retelling of it, it situates Iranian-Italian actor Isabella Nefar (Salomé at the National Theatre and soon to appear in the movie adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s bestselling memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran) as a woman in her kitchen while the story itself travels through places and time.
It explores the way that food links Sepehr to both her worlds. She continues: “I was coming home and all I was doing was cooking and sitting on my own and enjoying the food. I started texting the neighbours saying: ‘I’m cooking this, would you like me to bring you some?’ That was the start of my connection with people in England – food.” It brought her closer to her homeland as well: “As soon as you start cooking, it takes you back. It starts with the smell, then eating it, remembering the gatherings around it. Food hasn’t got a language, you can take it anywhere. It doesn’t need to be interpreted.”
Tantalisingly, those evocative smells are captured on stage through live cooking that will marinate the theatre in the distinct fragrances of Persian noodle soup – ash-e reshteh – made from Sepehr’s recipe, throughout the 70-minute show. The idea of incorporating food existed from the start, says Khalil: “I saw a show years ago at the National Theatre called Vincent in Brixton. During the show they had a real oven on stage and cooked a chicken. You could smell the chicken!” For this show, the question was: which dish? “I didn’t know Iranian food at all. I cooked my way through Atoosa’s amazing book, we settled on the dish of the show and Atoosa and I did a Zoom cook-along.” (Those early meetings took place during Covid.)
Khalil continues: “Food is a bridge back to her family in Iran and one that brings her to the UK as well, it created community for her here. Theatre is also about creating a community, a unique group of people who are going to experience something together.”
Sepehr was introduced to other playwrights before instantly clicking with Khalil, who felt her own heritage and upbringing – her father is Palestinian, she was raised in Dubai and moved back to the UK with her mother when her parents divorced – underpinned her understanding of Sepehr’s story. “I realised once I started talking to Atoosa that the story’s not about Iran,” she says. “It’s about how you start again, build from nothing again as a woman. That’s my mum’s story. My father didn’t really talk to me about politics or Palestine. My main connection to my heritage is food, he cooked and taught me those dishes.”
Khalil is clear about the key element of the story: “The strength of Atoosa as a person,” she says. “I really wanted to retain as much of her voice, her beautiful turns of phrase. I want people to leave feeling joyous and hopeful. What would be amazing is if someone saw the show and thought there is someone in my block that I don’t know, maybe I’ll go and say hello or cook for them.”
My English Persian Kitchen is a story of legacy, and bringing something handed down from home to a new country and new mediums is a feat Sepehr describes as “surreal”. “It’s a unique and strange feeling,” she says of seeing a version of herself on stage.
Sepehr now lives in Belfast where she works as a nutritional therapist, inspired by her own journey with food. “I never thought, writing the book and during those days when I was struggling, that I would end up in a place where I would have my story on stage,” she says.
“We can always give up and let the universe or others make a plan. Or you can do something about it and make the change yourself. Food is a language of its own that transcends borders. I really hope people would look at this play and for it to give them hope, to know that even in our darkest moments of life, nothing is for ever, we always have to look beyond it.”
My English Persian Kitchen is at Soho theatre, 16 September to 5 October.
