Daily Times

This year, the Government College University (GCU) Dramatics Club performed a Punjabi play. While the Dramatics Club reverted to a Punjabi language dramatic piece after 12 years, during which it presented both Urdu and English works, Mirza Ather Baig went for a Punjabi script after quite a long time, for it was during the old PTV days that the writer, now the patron of GCU Dramatics Club, would write both Urdu and Punjabi drama serials for television.

Directed by Irfan Randhawa and co-advised by Amna Anwaar Khan, the play titled ‘Aakhri Show’ brought to the front the dilemma of art and literature having grown elitist in Pakistan. While apparently, the play tells the story of a cinema about to presenting its last show before being demolished and shifted to a posh area as decided by its affluent owners and the doomed lives of gatekeepers, ticket-sellers and vendors outside the cinema, it pointed at three facts; one, being that Kings Cinema, as it was named in the play, plays English films; two, being, as told above, the cinema culture has been confined to people who can afford visiting cinemas equipped with the latest screen technologies, and, three, that when it comes to newspaper stories, culture reporters often interview the rich owners and organizers of artistic and literary activities, while the lower middle class people, who actually make the culture, and whose lives are inextricably linked with what goes on at the visible level, often go unnoticed. Vendors sell different items to cinema-goers. Gatekeepers and ticket-sellers know each and every face that enters the hall, yet what matters for reporters is the class running the cinemas. Thus, the word ‘story’ presents two meanings in the play – the one derived from journalistic language, and the other being the general meaning. The “stories” ignore the life-stories of common people, rendering “Aakhri Show” a play deeply rooted in Marxist theory, showing the alienation of the suppressed class and the benefit-gaining strategies of capitalists, and telling how the suppressed class, owing to its incomprehensibility of the English films being played inside the cinema, make a film of their own outside the cinema, based on their real-life actions and dialogues.

The self-reflexivity of ‘Aakhri Show’ lies in its being a Punjabi play itself, catering to a larger audience and giving the message that language can play an important part in creating class differences, be it the language of newspapers, the language of movies or the language of theories.

Ali Usman Bajwa, one of the performers from the play and a Punjabi short-story writer with publications in The Ravi, Sirjana and Swer International, says:

“Punjabi is the most widely spoken and understood language of Pakistan. The objective of any theatre should be to convey a message to the public, and this message will be best received and understood if told in a language which the public easily understands. Quality Punjabi theatre, Punjabi cinema and Punjabi literature are the need of the time. If good art and literature are presented in the language, the stigma of ‘illiteracy’ will also be removed from this language.”

Another performer of the play, Ali Nawaz, says, “What gives a realistic effect to Mirza Ather Baig’s writing, as I observed while memorizing this play’s lines, is that they have no melodramatic touch to them. They are often distorted, having ellipses, just like language that is spoken in real life, devoid of a dramatic flow and common to all speakers.”

Apart from these two, the play also starred Najamul Saqib, Seemab Shafique, Afaq Imran, Rahatul Ain, Sher Ali, Hamza Saleem, Daud Khan, Sheikh Mubashir, Umais Ali Chela, Zoha Shehzad, Salman Tahir, Atif Kamal, Muntazir Mehdi, Nihal Kazmi, Sohail Mayo, Basit Shafique, Kazim Cheema, Sohail Zaman, Roshail Ahmad, Abdullah Lodhi and Laique Ahmad.

The people involved in the production, art designing, music and other creative effects included Hassan Dahir, Bilal Shoaib, Ahsan Shahab, Irtiza Aslam, Ijaz Faiz, Mahnoor Sohail, Hifza Fareed, Sitara Rizvi, Mughees and Shamza and a few people from the cast too.

The writer can be reached at m.ali_aquarius85@yahoo.com