Five Days

Open House Festival 2023 presents…

“Joe Nawaz tears the roof off of the place with his excoriating one man show.” – John Patrick Higgins

“Go see Joe Nawaz’s harrowing, funny and deeply moving Five Days… as raw a piece of autobiographical theatre as I’ve ever seen. Strange, unsettling and always compelling.” – Jimmy Fay, Lyric Theatre. 

In April 2005, writer Joe Nawaz and his family travelled from Belfast to the wilds of Pakistan on the trail of a mystery. 

The mystery of how, where and why his father Rab had been murdered there. In this fiercely funny and poignant production, Joe will share the difficulties of transporting a body across international lines (easier to pack a poodle), the bizarre odyssey that he and his family took in their quest for truth without even a snippet of Urdu, Pakistani dress sense or cultural smarts. Join Joe as he takes us to the land of his father, where he never felt more Irish, as he sketches some of the history of that country and its unlikely links with Ireland.

Along the way we hear about Pakistani McDonalds, the best way to hold an automatic weapon when you’re offering someone a light, and how much it costs to grab a taxi from Islamabad airport to the Himalayas. Joe also examines his family’s experience living in NI as a mixed-race family juxtaposed with a journey into an unfamiliar place and culture.

Interrogating the very blurred lines between factual, personal experience and memory, Five Days is a celebration of family and an exploration of identity in a place where identity is still contentious, Joe has written extensively about growing up mixed-race in NI. In the wake of the centenary of NI and current local political disfunction, this show offers a unique perspective on partitions of all kinds.

Please note this event is theatre seated. If you have any accessibility requirements please get in touch with us here.