Legendary Pakistani entertainer Bushra Ansari is bringing her one-woman performance to Mississauga.

Shaam-e-Tabassum (translated as evening of smile) comes to Meadowvale Theatre in Mississauga on Sept. 5.

The show, a mix of comedy, storytelling, satire and music, is in Canada for the first time. Ansari told INsauga.com that the performance will be in Urdu with a little Punjabi. 

“The humour I’m going to create is around our culture, our language,” she said.

Ansari, 70, started her career at the age of nine and became part of the golden era of Pakistani television.

“I started as a singer, then I acted and I did comedy,” she said.

Ansari is well known in Pakistan and has won numerous awards during her career, including the Presidential Pride of Performance Award in 1989 for her contributions to Pakistani television. She now lives in Richmond Hill, but continues to travel to Pakistan for work. She has also worked in Canadian television, starring as Mommy Ji in the series Our Big Punjabi Family.

In 2023, after decades of success on television, Ansari took an unexpected risk: she stepped onto the stage alone in her first one-woman show, Malika-e-Tabassum (queen of smiles). The show sold out the 20 performances and packed houses across Pakistan. Ansari explored relationships, culture, feminism and the absurdities of everyday life.

Ansari says she is experimenting with something new and different.

“I like to shock people,” she said. “At this age, no one has done this.”

Show organizers compare Ansari’s story to the U.S. hit series Hacks. Shaam-e-Tabassum challenges the assumption that a woman’s most interesting creative years have to be behind her.

“For a Pakistani woman of my generation, standing alone on a stage and doing a one-woman comedy show is not exactly what people would have expected, especially at this stage of my life,” said Ansari. “Women are often given an idea of how they are supposed to behave as they get older: be quieter, be sensible, make yourself smaller. I seem to have done the opposite.”

Ansari said she has no plans to retire.

“I’ve spent my life performing, creating, making people laugh and saying things that perhaps weren’t always expected of me,” she said. “So why stop now? Shaam-e-Tabassum is a celebration of the fact that there is no age at which a woman has to stop being funny, ambitious, mischievous or visible. If anything, I think I have more to say now.”

The show on Saturday, Sept. 5 starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $96.05.

For more information and to purchase tickets, see the website here.


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