Daily Times

Theatre Wallay recently concluded a successful tour of Oregon, USA where they reached out to a total audience of more than 3,000.

The group had full-house performances at Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland, and at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which is the largest repertory theatre in the US. Their performances focussed on the changing nature of theatre artists’ relationship with public spaces in Pakistan, the struggle to sustain cultural spaces, and aimed to bring a slice of life in Pakistan to American audiences with the aim of dispelling stereotypes.

Five performances, five standing ovations from over three thousand people and incredible audience reviews; Theatre Wallay’s 2017 tour to the United States was a definite success.

Theatre Wallay, a non-profit group active in Islamabad since 2005, has been working since September 2016 on its latest project On Common Ground. This project resulted from collaboration between the group, Ithaca College, NY, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Artists Repertory Theatre, and was made possible by a grant from the US Embassy in Islamabad. A group of 14 people were on a two-week tour in Oregon from June to July as the culmination of phase one of this project.

At a time of heightened political, social and religious sensitivity and growing intolerance to diversity all over the world, Theatre Wallay chose as its subject public places, our “common ground”, these spaces that are changing and disappearing due to extremism and that need to be reclaimed. On Common Ground explores how we celebrate and reclaim public places – schools, squares, mosques, parks — spaces intended for learning, leisure and worship, which have been targeted by terror in Pakistan. It also focuses on the fact that ordinary lives, aspirations and dreams are quite the same across continents and cultures, and that people are united in a shared human experience despite differences of culture, religion, ethnicity and language.

American theatre professionals Linda Alper, David Studwell and Kathleen Mulligan produced, devised and directed the show, which involved a large Theatre Wallay team of more than a dozen writers, eight actors, two musicians, a vocalist and a dancer, as well as a stage manager and sound designer.

Theatre Wallay is the first Pakistani group to perform at OSF and Artists’ Rep, both institutions that are powered by the values of diversity, inclusion and community. Two performances were held at Artists’ Repertory Theatre in Portland, and three at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show in Ashland.

In addition to this, the sitarist, tabla player and vocalist performed in three public jams with Oregon pianists, guitarists, vocalists, a drummer, cellist and rapper.

They enjoyed informal meet-ups as well.

The Theatre Wallay dancer gave a master class, attended by 40 Portlanders, and also performed with a Portland based Indian American dancer who specialises in the same form of classical dance.

When the group was not on stage, they were busy spending time with theatre practitioners in discussions and workshops, learning from their expertise and technical knowledge. The Theatre Wallay company members attended eight workshops, where they learned new skills in directing, acting, producing, diversity training and theatre education.

In addition to this, the stage manager and sound designer worked one on one with different technical theatre experts and observed them at work.

Theatre Wallay artists shared their stories on four live radio shows, and got to see seven productions including “The Odyssey”, “Julius Caesar”, “Unison” and “Shakespeare in Love”.

With the US tour behind them, Theatre Wallay is now gearing up for the next phases of the project. They will now prepare a new script on the same topic, in Urdu, to be performed across major cities in Pakistan at the end of this year. Two team members will travel to Ithaca College in the autumn, to work with students there to incorporate the American perspective into the new Pakistani version of the script.

The group will be working with college and university student groups to teach script writing and acting, encouraging them to prepare their own performances to be showcased in a student festival organised by Theatre Wallay early next year. Dtm

A group of 14 people were on a two-week tour in Oregon from June to July as the culmination of phase one of this project