Women may be able to be many things, but can they be them all at once?

Courage Songs is a documentary play about ambition and family, love and independence, faith and criticality.

Five women are drawn together in Sufi Sisters, a Birmingham-based choral project. One of them is an outsider to the Muslim and South Asian majority, two are divorced, all are migrants or daughters of the diaspora. They begin staying back to share memories about songs that have given them courage. As their past lives are imagined and celebrated, they invite us into the discord of the present: Uzma finds new independence as her daughter leaves the nest but doesn’t have a language for it in her relationship. Shalina experiences success in her breathwork career while new caring responsibilities for her mum see her finding it hard to breathe. Ciara’s trying to write an autobiographical play but doesn’t know who her community is. The women learn tolerance and vulnerability as they strive for multiplicity in today’s binary logic.

*Courage Songs includes the testimonies of five Birmingham-based women, credited as ‘the ensemble’. The play is a tribute to them.


Photo of Shalina Litt whose testimonies are at the heart of the play. © Mikey Godfrey.