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Elif shears sheep for a rich landowner. Every other waking hour she spends queuing outside the palace, hoping that the King will let her live within the city walls. She comes from a faraway land. She is searching for sanctuary. And this is what we call a "hostile environment."
Sami Ibrahim's play A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a poetic fable about an impenetrable immigration system that mirrors our own. It premiered in Paines Plough's Roundabout in 2022, including a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as a co-production between Paines Plough and Rose Theatre, Kingston, in association with the Gate Theatre, London.
"A stunning, devastating excoriation of the Home Office's hostile environment policy that never forgets the human lives at its core." —Observer
"A captivating story... powerful, heart-wrenching and mesmeric." —The Skinny
"Resonant, at once recognisable and heightened... a modern-day story of emigration [that] has no happily ever after certainty." —Guardian
"A slyly told story, one which is buoyantly playful and yet undercut with sadness... a lovely show and a sobering one." —Stagedoor
Sami Ibrahim is a writer from London. His plays include: A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain (Paines Plough / Rose Theatre, Kingston / Gate Theatre, London, 2022); two Palestinians go dogging (Royal Court Theatre, London, 2022; winner of the inaugural Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award in 2019); Metamorphoses, co-written with Laura Lomas and Sabrina Mahfouz, after Ovid (Shakespeare's Globe, 2021); Wind Bit Bitter, Bit Bit Bit Her (2018 VAULT Festival, London); Iron Dome Fog Dome (The Yard, London, 2017) and Force of Trump (Brockley Jack).
He has worked at the Almeida Theatre as a member of their Creative Board, developing and producing From the Ground Up, a piece of immersive theatre.