Essop Khan gave me the idea for Outside-In, which was written in 1982/3, in the last decade of the apartheid era when the system was in its dying throes and therefore, most vicious and quite demented.  Though there were glimmerings of hope, it was the darkness that enveloped us and ordinary people were engulfed in tremendous fear.  Outside-In portrays the troubled relationship of two very ordinary apolitical South Africans who struggle to find each other in the darkness of a fear ridden society.

The play was first produced by the Work-in-Progress (WIP) Theatre Company at the Hermit Theatre in Durban in February 1983.  The South African Theatre Organisation, administrator Mike Stainbank, took the play to the Grahamstown Festival in July 1984.

The play was revised in 2001 and published in 2002, in South African Indian Writings in English, compiled by Rajendra Chetty.

The play was edited in 2008.

SETTING :  The living room of a sparsely furnished flat.

CHARACTERS                                         CAST

Kate Reynolds,                                  Pippa Dyer

Kassim Mohamed                              Essop Khan