IT began life as a film treatment, became a play first staged in Plymouth in Autumn 2000 and tomorrow the northern premiere of Ash Kotak's feelgood Asian comedy Hijra opens at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds.

"It might have been difficult to sell the idea of 'a gay Indian comedy', but not so," says Ash, his voice croaking through the gauze of a winter cold.

"I didn't want it to be a race play; I wanted it to be just seen as a play, not as a gay play, nor as an Indian play. It's a comedy for anyone who never does what their mother tells them. Italians tell me it's an Italian play, Jews say it's Jewish, Punjabis say it's Punjabi, and that's because it's about community and hypocrisy, and a lot of the characters are easily recognisable, though I have twisted them."

Hijra, Kotak's first full-length play, delves into the secretive and traditional culture of the Indian Hijras, transvestite men who, according to Hindu tradition, are able to grant wishes and cast spells.

In a story which spans two continents, Nils, a young Asian man, chooses to shun his mother's carefully laid plans for future marital bliss. During the Bombay wedding season, he meets Raj, the adopted son of a Guru Hijra, and decides that Raj is the one for him, so plans are made to smuggle a disguised Raj to England. However, when gossiping neighbours, well-meaning mothers and rejected fiancees become involved, disaster is imminent.

Ash was inspired to write Hijra by the status of both Hijras and homosexuals in India.

"Hijra is considered to be the third gender in India," he says. "There are 250,000 of them, there are Hijra councillors and an Hijra MP and while they are generally laughed about, the other side is that they're accepted but homosexuality is still illegal in India, and it's got worse because of the Hindu Fundamentalist government. The only gay club in Bombay was fire bombed three months ago."

Rather than filling his play with anger, comedy was Ash's weapon of choice. "Although I grew up in North London, I was forced as a child to go to India at Christmas, which I hated, except for going to the Gujarati theatre in Bombay, as my father was involved in theatre as an actor and director. Gujarati are very conservative people but I realised that with comedy you could do anything," he says.

"So it was a deliberate decision to make Hijra a comedy and it works because it's humorous, it's colourful and people learn about something they didn't know about but, having said that, so many people have come out of the play saying it was very moving and that's more important to me. The fact it's moving means that word of mouth really sold the play in Plymouth and at the Bush Theatre in London."

So much so that Ash already has received eight offers from "very established producers" to turn Hijra into a film, and he is working on the project himself. "The reason I wrote it in the first place was to get it made as a movie, and while I knew it would be quicker to do the play, I'm trained in film, and that's what I want to do," he says.

More Kotak plays are in the pipeline too, one commissioned by the Royal National Theatre Studio on the philosopher Krishna Nurti, the other by Plymouth Theatre Royal on the theme of S&M sex. Both should be ready for 2003.

In the meantime, Yorkshire can catch up with Hijra, directed, as it was in Plymouth, by Ian Brown, now the associate director at the Playhouse.

Hijra, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tomorrow until March 9. Box office: 0113 213 7700.

Updated: 10:19 Friday, February 08, 2002