Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alum Almanya Narula ’16, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting, presents a special Columbia Night performance of her award-winning solo show Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy, which she performed to acclaim in June at the 2022 Hollywood Fringe Festival in California. The performance on Friday, August 19, features a postshow talkback and reception for Columbia College alumni. The $10 ticket charge for that night includes admission to the show and one drink ticket for the post-show mixer and talkback. Tickets are FREE for Innovator members of the Columbia College Alumni Network. For information about the Alumni Network and Innovator membership, click here.

The show, which won two awards at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, will be presented at the Broadwater Theatre, located at 6322 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles. Showtime is 8 PM Pacific time.

As previously reported in this blog, the show honors a real-life hero of World War II, Indian-born Noor Inayat Khan (1914-1944), a British spy who fought the Nazis at the cost of her own life. In 1943, Khan, a children’s book author, Sufi singer, and direct descendant of the Indian Emporer Tipu Sultan, became the first woman and the first Indian to be sent out as a spy and wireless operator into Nazi-occupied France under British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s orders. Her work in the field under the code name Madeleine saved many lives that were instrumental to the success of the Allied invasion of France on D-Day in 1944. But after betrayal by a double agent, Noor was caught and detained for interrogation. In this imagining of the last 30 minutes of her life, Khan — now cornered by the Nazis with nothing but death assured to her — reminds us who she is, why she matters, and why she will always be a part of history.