Birmingham writer Naylah Ahmed's "compelling and vivid" thriller Mustafa, which had its world première last month, opens at mac in Birmingham this week as part of the REP's off-site season.
Naylah Ahmed has been writing for stage, radio and television since the late 1990s.
She was a founding script editor for Silver Street, the first British Asian soap which aired on radio on the BBC Asian Network.
Mustafa was developed when she was on attachment at the REP and was subsequently commissioned by the theatre.
She says about her inspiration for the play, "Throughout the ‘80s we spent many Eid nights during family get-togethers huddled in a room listening to djinn (genies) stories that kept us deliciously scared. But we heard them essentially as fiction.
"As I got older, I started thinking about where these stories began and realised that when they were first recounted in Pakistan they were told as accounts of something that had really happened.
"So why didn't we see them that way—what had changed? There are so many ways of exploring this rich subject matter, but the transition of account to story is what first sparked the idea for what finally came to be Mustafa."
The play is set in a prison where Mustafa is serving a sentence for the death of a teenage boy during an exorcism. When prisoners who taunt him suffer mysterious injuries and officers start behaving strangely, Mustafa thinks the evil djinn he tried to banish from the young victim's body is still with him and he must face it once more.
Directed by Janet Steel, Mustafa features a cast of four. Munir Khairdin takes the title role. His theatre credits include The Comedy of Errors at the Royal Exchange, Behzti at Birmingham REP and Bombay Dreams in the West End.
Gary Pillai who plays Shabir was in Shared Experience's A Passage to India, Wuthering Heights at the Lyric Hammersmith and Mahabharata at Sadler's Wells.
Ryan Early (Dan) is best known for his role as PC Tom Nicholson in Heartbeat. His stage credits include shows at the Royal Court and the Globe.
Completing the cast is Paul McCleary as Len. His theatre credits include The Taming of the Shrew for the RSC and Juno and the Paycock and Oedipus for the National Theatre.
Set design is by Colin Falconer, lighting design by Tim Mitchell and music by Arun Ghosh.
Mustafa runs at mac, Birmingham from Tuesday until Saturday.