It can be underestimated and taken for granted the level of patience and empathy needed when taking on a care role, the role of rapport a powerful indicator as to whether the day will go well or not. Exploring the notion of care in his latest stand up piece, comedian Bilal Zafar looks back at his own personal experience of taking on the role of a care worker at the age of 21 in his show Care, offering an honest insight into what the role entails and the impact this has had on him years on.
Casual in tone, Zafar takes us back to his post graduate days, a once budding filmmaker equipped with a media degree, now struggling to find work in the field and faced with the reality of finding a career that he perhaps wouldn’t have expected to go into, a job role in care vacant at the time with not much experience required. We’re then introduced to an array of characters – a mixture of colleagues and elders who have evidently shaped his time there, one of the elders – Barry, who’d constantly call Zafar ‘Al’, instead of ‘Bilal’, indirectly a driving force in the budding comic’s career with his offbeat humour.
Care is honest in its delivery, the fact that this wasn’t necessarily where Zafar saw his life after studying is endearing to hear, we gauge his naivety at the time and how now it has given him the life experience and lens in which he’s able to tell his story to us all. Zafar isn’t afraid to laugh at himself, he talks of how at points he was able to draw from his media training and love of film to deal with certain situations, including hostage negotiation tactics and having to pretend to be room service as that’s what an elder thought he was. He’s able to explore themes of mental health, race, ambitions, care and loneliness with such calm and ease, his sarcasm is perfectly timed and a joy to watch and listen to.
Written by Lucy Basaba.
Bilal Zafar: Care will show until the 14th/16th to 29th August 2022 at Underbelly Jersey (Bistro Square) as part of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. To find out more about the show, visit here…
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