Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Pink Rabbit
Farah Ashraf and NAZAR Arts, Little Stitch Productions
Venue: Daisy at Underbelly, Bristo Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Amna, a good Muslim daughter navigates growing up in a conservative Pakistani household in the UK. As her desires and need for attention grows, she turns towards her OnlyFans alter eg, PersianBaby, raising questions around the lack of space for female desire in South Asian cultures.
Review
Farah Ashraf plays Amna, a girl growing up in a conservative Muslim family in the UK who does everything that her family typically asks for. She prays, stays away from boys, and listens to her parents, specifically her mother. Until age and the body do its thing and give rise to a need for connection, attention and sexual desires. At the surface level, this seems like an ordinary coming-of-age story of a young woman. But Ashraf’s brilliant writing makes this performance far more than just a coming-of-age tale. It’s poetic, political and deeply reflective.
Ashraf is a terrific performer. She chooses to keep the staging of this show very simple – a shift in body posture is enough to change the character, the dildo transforms into a gun and the use of a microphone is all that’s needed to show an online interaction. She doesn’t fuss about complex lighting, costume, stage design or sound. Her body tells the entire story, and this is a deeply effective choice when the story is personal and rooted in the needs and desires of the body. She embodies the entire story.
Which is why when the room got really stuffy on a hot Edinburgh afternoon and the audience was battling their sweat by fanning themselves with flyers, Ashraf was still very watchable and engaging. The studio was a hot box, but Ashraf was in the world she created and she kept us with her in that world even as the rising temperature and lack of fresh air was trying to get us out of it. And Ashraf’s presence was so captivating and her storytelling so impactful that nobody decided to walk out to breathe.
Ashraf raised some very important questions that are not seen often at the Ed Fringe. She points towards the duality of being in a progressive country but a conservative family. How does one balance that? How do you keep your faith alive while also listening to needs that your religion considers evil? Why does Islam (and many other religions) not have any space for women’s desires? How often do we delve into the inner lives of our parents and what they had to let go of to create the world we now live in?
Ashraf chooses to end the show with many complex questions. It could’ve easily been a loud, freeing end where it’s her freedom that’s chosen over everything else that’s considered “traditional” or “conservative”. But she chooses to give voice to Amna’s mother as well, opening up a world of dialogue between the two ideologies.
Pink Rabbit is highly recommended for its daring questions and powerful performance, especially if you’re not from a Pakistani/British Pakistani background, because it will definitely expand our capacity to empathise with others. This is a great double bill with Vibhinna Ramdev’s Why English?. South Asians make up a quarter of the world’s population, and these two performances provide a wonderful honest window into what may be the hidden life of every fourth person in the world.
