Interviews: Hannah Khalil and Sierra Sevilla

The Fringe is often described as a theatrical feast, but My English Persian Kitchen and For The Love of Spam are taking that literally. Expect the fragrant perfume of fresh herbs, a gently simmering stew, and try a Guamanian recipe in the form of a “spam-ape” – that’s a Spam canape, obviously.

“Theatre should be about all five senses!” grins playwright Hannah Khalil. It’s the first time she’s adapted a cookbook for the stage – My English Persian Kitchen is based on the stories in Atoosa Sepehr’s From A Persian Kitchen – but she’s found a similar rhythm in plotting an emotional monologue and judging the best moment to turn up the heat. A play about community, cultural heritage and how it feels to “start again” as an immigrant in a new country, Sepehr’s recipes-as-storytelling resonated deeply with Khalil, despite not sharing her Iranian background.

“It’s a story I understand, because it happened to my mum,” Khalil says, who has Palestinian heritage. “It’s about being human in a difficult situation, and food as a way of accessing a place you can’t really go to, or family members you can’t see.”

Khalil stresses there’s no way she could stage Sepehr’s story without actual, real cooking on stage. Lucky that performer Isabella Nefar is both a great actor and cook. “Being teary around cut onions is a good thing,” Khalil laughs. “And she’s good with a knife.” While juggling her lines, Nefar will be preparing ash-e reshteh, a type of noodle soup which uses tons of herbs, barbary, lime and turmeric: “It’s going to smell amazing!” Khalil emphasises, “and it’s uniquely theatrical – you don’t get this in any other artform.” Even more importantly, it turns the stage into an informal, domestic space where Sepehr’s story feels at home.

My English Persian Kitchen / Photo by Ray Roberts

Likewise, Sierra Sevilla’s one-woman, Spam-based performance uses the tinned ham to bridge cultures. Sevilla is a CHamoru and Filipina theatre-maker from Guam, but her play started in her London kitchen. “People would say, ‘That’s nasty! Why would you eat that?’ – and I got really upset about it,” she says, as rejections of her “comfort food” mirrored the way that Western countries have treated her island.

Spam (aka Supply Processed American Meat) was invented during WW2 to feed US troops. “Wherever the US military had a footprint, you’ll find legacies of spam,” she explains, and the tins are inextricable from her Guamanian childhood. During typhoons her mother would make spam kelaguen, which uses lots of lemon juice, peppers and onion, when the power went out. A long shelf-life makes it both “convenient and traditional” to a remote island prone to severe weather, but to Sevilla it tastes like home.  

And yet, Spam’s ‘bad’ reputation overseas, and in the US specifically, is a rich metaphor. “The US produces Spam but they don’t like it,” she says, “in the same way that they own [Guam] as a territory but they don’t care about us.” As a result, lovingly serving audiences (possibly) their first taste of Spam is a symbolic way to unpick Guam’s history. “If I saw a show about a dish and nobody gave me that dish after? I’d feel robbed!” she jokes. “I have to feed people, that’s how we show love. And it means everything to me that they’ve opened their hearts to try it.”

For Sevilla and Khalil, cooking and playwriting are acts of community. Combined, they result in sensory storytelling which exists beyond language. “With writing and cooking, I can shut out the noise of the world,” says Khalil. “I decide the ending and make the dish I want for my dinner… As long as it doesn’t boil over!”