EUROPEAN PREMIERE
AISHA KHAN PRODUCTIONS
BUFFOON
By Anosh Irani
Performed by Daniel Weyman
Supported by Sheffield Theatres, Arts Council England and Bradford Arts Centre
16 – 18 July 2026
Sheffield Theatres Playhouse
A darkly funny, deeply human solo-show; love, loss, and the magic of clowning.
Aisha Khan Productions (AKP) – a bold new producing company dedicated to premiering international contemporary theatre telling stories rarely seen or heard in the UK – announces its inaugural production: the European Premiere of BUFFOON by award-winning Canadian playwright and novelist Anosh Irani.
Stage, film and television actor Daniel Weyman – known for playing Gandalf in Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power – will perform the solo role of Felix the Buffoon.
BUFFOON is directed by Aisha Khan and will run at Sheffield Theatres from 16 to 18 July 2026. The production is supported by Sheffield Theatres, Arts Council England and Bradford Arts Centre.
THE PLAY: BUFFOON
Born to circus folk preferring trapezing over parenting, Felix grows up alone, surviving extraordinary encounters and heartbreaking experiences, and so, the clown – the Buffoon – is born.
Now Felix is stepping into the spotlight to share his unique but universal life-story, searching for family, self, and love.
In a world increasingly defined by division, isolation and disconnection, BUFFOON speaks directly to our deep human hunger for connection, compassion and resilience of the human spirit.
The play is a dark and poetic exploration of fate, identity, and love through the life of a man who is shaped—and ultimately trapped—by forces beyond his control. While the play uses the world of circus as a backdrop, its true power lies in its examination of family, trauma, love, and the struggle to break free from one’s past.
Irani’s writing strips theatre back to its essentials: one performer, one story, an audience and a mesmerising theatrical experience.
Irani’s clown is more than a character; he is the play’s central metaphor. Felix hides behind the clown’s chalked face, using performance, humour and absurdity to shield himself from pain. As the mask begins to slip, BUFFOON becomes the story of a man allowing himself to be truly seen. The slipping away of the mask is not an ending but a revelation: the emergence of the real Felix, stripped of pretence, exposed in his flaws and longing, and finally capable of embracing himself.
In that act of unmasking, Felix uncovers a deeply human truth: that vulnerability is not weakness, but the very thing that makes connection possible.
AKP is proud to introduce the work of Anosh Irani, one of Canada’s most celebrated theatrical voices, to UK audiences for the first time with the European premiere of BUFFOON, which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play in 2020 and has been celebrated by critics across Canada and the USA:
“….a dark tale for our dark times, with some laughs along the way, and a gleam of hope that the broken can be mended, and the unforgivable forgiven.” – Vancouver Sun
“Buffoon matches a multi-layered script with a magnificent solo performance… an epic tale of love and betrayal, triumph and loss, connection and abandonment – the human story.” – Globe and Mail
“A circus-noir monodrama… a paragon of tonal control and captivating solo storytelling.” – Now
“Buffoon is full of powerful moments and rich metaphor.” – Broadway World
Anosh Irani, Writer:
“BUFFOON began with an image from my childhood that haunted me for years: a clown from one of my grand-aunt’s paintings. I found myself wondering about the wound behind the make-up. The play took almost fifteen years to reach the stage as it evolved from a larger circus story into one man’s quest for love, family, and belonging.
I’m excited to collaborate with Aisha Khan and Daniel Weyman for the UK and European premiere in Sheffield.
Aisha’s innate understanding of the text, combined with her compassion and theatrical imagination, along with Daniel’s rare ability to reveal both the comedy and loneliness at the heart of Felix the clown, will create BUFFOON for a brand-new audience, and set the show off on a deeper journey.”
Aisha Khan, Director & Founder of AKP:
“This play brought me together with the extraordinary imagination and sensibility of Anosh Irani and his unique, captivating plays and novels. Anosh’s writing is poetic yet piercingly honest. His play, BUFFOON, beautifully captures the complexities of the human condition in a way that resonates profoundly today.
Felix the Clown’s extraordinary world, realised through Daniel Weyman’s performance of striking vulnerability, maximises theatre’s superpowers of immediacy, telling deeply personal stories and being funny and tragic in the same breath.
The play may simply be seen as a story of a clown; but BUFFOON is so much more, it is timeless, it is all our stories, it is about humanity.”
Elizabeth Newman, Artistic Director, Sheffield Theatres
“We are so excited to be supporting Aisha Khan as a theatre maker and arts leader on this inaugural production with her company AKP. It is a privilege to be working with Aisha and her specialist team to bring the work of an international artist of Anosh’s reputation to life here in Sheffield.”
CAST & CREATIVE TEAM
Felix Daniel Weyman
Writer Anosh Irani
Director Aisha Khan
Movement Director Joyce Henderson
Lighting Designer Alexandra Stafford
Composer & Sound Designer Matthew Bugg
Casting Consultant Ellie Collyer-Bristow CDG
Producer Henrietta Duckworth
PRODUCTION DETAILS
Production: BUFFOON by Anosh Irani
Presented by: Aisha Khan Theatre Productions
Supported by: Sheffield Theatres, Arts Council England and Bradford Arts Centre
Dates: Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 July 2026
Venue: Sheffield Theatres – Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse
Tickets: sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/events/buffoon
Press Night: Friday 17 July, 7pm
BSL Interpreted Performance: Friday 17 July, 7pm, Charlotte Anderson
ABOUT AISHA KHAN PRODUCTIONS
Aisha Khan Productions (AKP) launches in 2026 as a bold new producing company dedicated to premiering international contemporary theatre telling stories rarely seen or heard in the UK.
The Northern based company will produce theatre in the UK and forge international partnerships by investing in talent – writers, directors, designers, producers and technical crafts.
BUFFOON is AKTP’s inaugural production.
Instagram: aktheatreproductions
ABOUT SHEFFIELD THEATRES
Sheffield Theatres is home to four theatres: the Crucible, the Sheffield landmark with a world-famous reputation; the Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, an intimate, versatile space for getting closer to the action; the gleaming Lyceum, the beautiful proscenium that hosts the best of the UK’s touring shows, and the Montgomery, a theatre and arts centre with a longstanding history of championing children’s creativity.
Sheffield Theatres is the ticket to big names and local heroes, timeless treasures and new voices, and each year welcomes over 400k audience members.
With a longstanding reputation for bold new work, many multi-award-winning shows have been made in Sheffield including Life of Pi and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie which have both enjoyed West End and international transfers before returning to the theatres as part of UK tours.
Other recent transfers include the acclaimed Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and the sensational Sheffield-set new musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge which transferred to the National Theatre and the West End in 2024. Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian’s KENREX had a sell-out run in the Playhouse in autumn 2024, transferring to Southwark Playhouse Borough in February 2025, and more recently to The Other Palace for Christmas 2025-26 and then onto Broadway where it will run from April 2026 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York.
Committed to investing in the creative leaders of the future, Sheffield Theatres’ dedicated talent development hub, The Bank, supports a new cohort of emerging theatre-makers from the region every year.
In January 2025, the Montgomery Theatre and Arts Centre joined the Sheffield Theatres family of venues. A leading arts centre for children, families and community groups in Yorkshire, the Montgomery is also home to many of Sheffield Theatres participatory strands for children and young people.
Crucible | Lyceum | Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse | Montgomery 55 Norfolk Street, Sheffield, S1 1DA sheffieldtheatres.co.uk
DANIEL WEYMAN – ACTOR
Daniel Weyman plays Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power on Amazon Prime. He has recently appeared in multi-award-winning short film UNCLE ARTOO, playing Nosferatu.
TV credits include Silent Witness (BBC) as Clarissa’s husband Max; Dr Kenny in Sally Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack (BBC); VERA (ITV); Poirot (ITV); and Foyle’s War as Sam’s MP-husband Adam.
Theatre credits include The Mentor (Vaudeville Theatre, dir. Laurence Boswell); Sideways (dir. David Grindley); 4000 Days (dir. Matt Aston); The Crucible (dir. Tom Morris); Kafka’s Dick (dir. David Grindley); King Lear (dir. Lucy Bailey); Nicholas Nickleby (nominated for the TMA Best Performance in a Play Award, dir. Philip Franks and Jonathan Church); Julius Caesar (dir. Deborah Warner) and Calico (dir. Ed Hall).
Daniel has recorded over 130 audiobooks including the 2025 Booker Prize-winning Flesh; Stanislavski’s books on the actor’s system including An Actor Prepares; and he is the voice of Peter James’ Detective Roy Grace series. He has received multiple awards including APA Audiobook Narrator of the Year in 2016. He can be heard on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and Book of the Week, and has recorded many radio dramas, recently playing titular characters in Churchill’s Bust and Bettaney.
ANOSH IRANI – WRITER
Anosh Irani has published four critically acclaimed novels: The Cripple and His Talismans (2004), a national bestseller; The Song of Kahunsha (2006), which was an international bestseller and shortlisted for Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; Dahanu Road (2010), which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize; and The Parcel (2016), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
His play Bombay Black (2006) won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, as did his one-man show Buffoon (2019). His anthology The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black (2007) and his play The Men in White (2018) were both finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama; Behind the Moon (2023) was a finalist for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play. In 2023, Irani was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award “given to a mid-career writer in recognition of a remarkable body of work.”
Irani’s short stories have appeared in Granta and The Los Angeles Review of Books and have been collected in Translated from the Gibberish: Seven Stories and One Half Truth (2019). His nonfiction has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Guardian, and The New York Times. His work has been translated into eleven languages, and he teaches fiction and playwriting in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
His latest play, a stage adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s novel, A Fine Balance, will premiere at Crow’s Theatre, Toronto, in September 2026.
AISHA KHAN – DIRECTOR & FOUNDER, AISHA KHAN THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
Aisha Khan is a writer for theatre, radio and screen, director and dramaturg. Aisha’s new version of A Christmas Carol, commissioned and produced by Sheffield Theatres, completed a successful run in the Crucible Theatre from Dec’25 to Jan’26.
Directing work includes The Abyss by Ghiath Al-Mhitawi (Royal Court/Edinburgh International Festival); Spirits by Gemma Bedeau and Lump by Kieran Launder (Freedom Studios); When We Were Brothers by Ben Tagoe (Freedom Studios); When I Say I Love You by Pete Bowker (SL Shorts); Beep (writer and director, Northern Bullits); 15 Minutes Live (co-produced with Slung Low) and Wheatish (Spark Lab Productions/Radio 4).
Writing work includes No Man’s Land (Theatre An Der Parkau, Berlin/Leeds Playhouse); The Market (Leeds Playhouse); The Johnny Eck and Dave Toole Show (co-writer with Mark Catley, Slung Low, dir. Alan Lane); The Bee Mask (dir. Sam Wood, Northern Bullits) and Moonshed (dir. Sarah Frankcom, Royal Exchange Theatre). BBC Radio 4 work includes Road Trip, Driftwood Heart, Paper Flowers and Durkopianap D (dir. Alan Lane, 15 Minute Live, Slung Low).
Aisha was previously Co-Artistic Director of Freedom Studios from 2015 to 2022.
