“We’ve become the boogie men”: Islamophobia, Schlock Horror and “Radicalization” in Omar El-Khairy and Nadia Latif’s Homegrown

Abstract

Omar El-Khairy and Nadia Latif’s 2015 immersive theatre production, Homegrown, aimed to tell the complex stories behind tabloid headlines about British Muslim teenagers being “radicalized” by ISIS at school and online. The production was commissioned by the National Youth Theatre and was set to involve a troupe of 115 young actors performing in the premises of an East London school. However, securing a school willing to host the production proved difficult, with venues pulling out when they learned more about the piece’s content, and the NYT eventually dropped the play two weeks before its opening night. Two years later, in 2017, the script was published independently: the only way by which the play can be experienced in its entirety, to date.
Until now, Homegrown’s cancellation has received considerable attention, while the content of the play itself has largely been overlooked. Addressing this gap in the conversation, the present article argues that El-Khaiy and Latif’s play script deserves to be read widely, as it offers one of the most nuanced and sophisticated literary explorations of Islamophobia in Britain today, especially in the context of the UK Government’s controversial anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, as well as contemporary discourses surrounding the “radicalization” of young Muslims more generally. Through a subversive appropriation of “B-movie schlock” horror tropes, the play exposes the equally cheap and hackneyed binaries that are ingrained into the language of counterterrorist discourse in the UK, while exposing the limitations to outward claims of inclusivity and anti-racism in the ostensibly liberal institutions of British theatre and publishing.