Interview with Mohammedally Hashemi

Ahead of Where There Is No Time, I caught up with Mohammedally Hashemi to talk about the themes at the heart of the production, the creative journey behind it, and what audiences can look forward to when the lights go up.

What first inspired you to write Where There Is No Time?

I’ve always started with finding the right world to carry a story, and with Where There Is No Time that world was the glamorous, high-pressure fashion industry. I was fascinated by the intimate, often fraught dynamic between a model and a fashion designer, and in this case that relationship crystallised around Yusuf Jamali. Once I found that vehicle, it opened up a way for me to really interrogate the themes that were driving me: art versus commerce, heritage versus commerce, and how someone tries to navigate those tensions without losing themselves.

What central question sits at the heart of this play?

The central question at the heart of this play is: what happens to an artist’s soul when art collides with commerce? At its core, the play is asking whether it is possible to hold on to the original innocence, joy, and purity that made you create in the first place once your work becomes profitable and starts to feed an industry.

Every artist — whether a fashion designer, writer, actor, painter, or musician — begins from a place of pure love for the craft, creating simply because it makes them happy. Over time, as success grows, there’s a subtle shift: you start thinking about what will sell, what the market wants, what the algorithm will favour, and that can slowly contaminate that early, unselfconscious passion. Yusuf Jamali embodies this struggle; throughout the play he is constantly negotiating the line between staying true to his artistic vision and bending to commercial pressures, and the question becomes: how much can you compromise before you lose the very thing that made you an artist in the first place?

Yusuf’s character navigates heritage and commerce. How much of the story reflects your own experiences or observations?

A lot of it does. As a British-Iranian-Yemeni actor, writer and producer, I’ve absorbed so many conversations and contradictions around identity, success and representation, and I’ve poured those observations into this play. I’m very conscious of how tempting it can be to profit from pain and politics, especially when the industry often rewards artists for taking very visible stances on certain issues, like the situation in Iran.

For me, it feels honest only when it comes from a genuinely personal place, not because it’s fashionable or financially advantageous. The problem is that, from the outside, there are always people who see the economic value in that pain, and that can make even sincere work appear inauthentic. Yusuf’s struggle with heritage and commerce is my way of interrogating that tension: how do you honour where you come from and what you believe, without allowing your story, or your politics, to be packaged and sold back to you.

How has the development process been so far, and have some moments radically shifted from your original intentions?

The development process has been genuinely beautiful so far, from those first days at the laptop to being in the rehearsal room with the company. The play keeps evolving and revealing new layers of itself to me and the team; every run, every conversation, sharpens something or uncovers a detail I hadn’t fully seen before.

Nothing has radically shifted from my original intentions, but it has become more nuanced and more pronounced. The core has stayed the same, yet the characters’ contradictions feel richer, and the themes feel even more urgently timed, especially given the state of the world right now and the conversations we’re all having about identity, politics and the cost of ambition

How do you balance the political, personal, and creative themes in the show?

Honestly, that question is exactly what Yusuf Jamali play by myself is wrestling with in the show. There’s never a perfectly “true” way to balance the political, the personal and the creative without feeling, at some point, that you might be betraying one of them.

For me, the personal is always at the heart of everything, so I start there and let the politics and the aesthetics grow out of that, rather than the other way round. In this play I’ve deliberately leaned into that tension rather than trying to solve it neatly, and used the fashion world as a heightened backdrop to explore what happens when your politics, your heart and your artistry are all being watched, judged and monetised at the same time.

How did the collaboration with Sheyi Cole as producer shape the production?

Sheyi Cole has brought such immense value to this project. Even though this is his debut Off-West End production, he has a real instinct for how to get things done, how to build a team around a shared vision, and how to position and market a show so it actually reaches people.

That combination of creative sensitivity and practical know-how has shaped not just the production side, but also the confidence with which we’re dreaming about the play’s future. It feels like we’re laying foundations for what will hopefully be the beginning of a long, successful journey for this show, and his belief in it has been a huge part of that.

How do you hope audiences engage with Yusuf’s struggle between family legacy and global success?

I hope audiences really sit inside Yusuf’s intentions, not just his outcomes. He’s someone who is desperate to honour his Mum’s legacy through the “Dress Of Faith” and carve out a place in the world, but in chasing that global success he makes terrible decisions and drifts into some very dark territory.

What I’d love is for people to feel both drawn to his ambition and disturbed by the compromises he makes, and to recognise versions of that struggle in their own lives, careers or families. In many ways, I see the play as a cautionary tale about what happens when legacy and success become everything, and you lose sight of why you started in the first place.

What was the biggest challenge in staging this play?

There are always challenges, no matter how much money or how many resources you have. I try not to complain, because that’s just the reality of making theatre, but what I can say is that I’m incredibly proud of how the team has met every obstacle with creativity and grace.

In a way, the hardest part has been holding the scale and ambition of the world in my head while working within the practical limits of an Off-West End production, and still making it feel rich and nuanced. I honestly can’t wait for everyone’s work to be rewarded when audiences finally see what we’ve built together.

What do you hope audiences take away from Where There Is No Time?

I don’t think that part is really up to me. Once the play is in front of an audience, it belongs to them, and what they take away will always be coloured by their own lives, experiences and questions.

What I hope is that it stirs something in them — whether that’s reflection, discomfort, recognition or simply the feeling of having been immersed in a world that stays with them on the way home. The rehearsals are for us, but the show is for them, so above all I just want them to have a good time in the theatre

How did working with Hamza Ali influence the physicality of the show?

Hamza has been an integral part of this play’s DNA; he’s the one who really brought everyone together and steered the ship creatively. His eye for detail and rhythm has shaped the physical language of the show — how bodies move through space, how tension sits in a room, how stillness can be as loud as an explosion.

He’s extremely talented as a director and incredibly intuitive about what an actor’s body can communicate without a single line being spoken. I genuinely think he’s one to watch, and a huge reason why the world of this play feels so alive and textured on stage.

One final question: why this show, and why now?

I don’t really think about “why now” when I’m writing — I just write, and somehow the moment the work reaches the world always ends up feeling like the right time. The timing reveals itself later.

But if you look at this play’s themes, and at a protagonist who is British-Iranian-Yemeni, trying to navigate heritage, ambition and identity, it feels incredibly timely for it to be happening right now, in the middle of so much global chaos particularly in Iran and the region. In that sense, the show has accidentally arrived in a moment that mirrors Yusuf’s inner turmoil, which makes his story feel even more urgent and necessary.