The man who proved he doesn’t belong behind the scenes

Had there been a title of ‘Man of the Series’ in the Karachi Theatre Festival 2023, it would have surely gone to Farhan Alam Siddiqui, who, in the varying capacities of playwright, director and actor, was involved in a total of seven plays that were performed during the festival that ran from September 8 to October 8, 2023, at the Arts Council of Pakistan (ACP).

Siddiqui directed Khwaja Moinuddin’s ‘Taleem-e-Balighan’, which was such a big hit that it was again staged during the concluding ceremony of the festival. He acted in five plays — ‘Police’, ‘Gadha Mandi’, ‘Dinner with Darling’, ‘The Finest Cutter’ and ‘Biwi Ho To Aisi’ — that were directed by some experienced theatre practitioners as well as fresh graduates.

He also directed a play that he himself had penned after drawing inspiration from his mother’s struggle with dementia and how his father took care of her. Despite being a tragedy, a genre that does not resonate much with theatre-goers nowadays, the play, titled ‘Aik Yaad’, and starring Kashif Hussain and Kiran Siddiqui, was massively praised at the theatre festival and re-enacted for multiple days after a few months.

This year the ACP has made the theatre festival part of its grand project — World Culture Festival — that will feature performances of artistes from some 30 countries. The festival is scheduled to run from September 26 to October 30.

Against this backdrop, I sat down with Siddiqui for a conversation on September 11 to learn about his journey in the field of theatre so far, and whether he is involved in multiple stage productions this time as well.

He is currently part of the ACP’s theatre faculty, which is headed by veteran actor and writer Khalid Ahmed. He explained that the schedule for the World Culture Festival had not been finalised yet due to the uncertainty surrounding the participation of some foreign artistes in the festival. He, however, revealed that he is most likely to direct one play and act in a few others.

Regarding his participation in seven stage productions in last year’s festival, he explained that initially he was only involved in three. He was supposed to direct ‘Aik Yaad’, which he had also written, and act in ‘Gadha Mandi’ and ‘Police’, but later, he somehow got dragged into four more plays.

He said it was indeed challenging, but it was not the first time he had undertaken such a burdensome task. He recalled being involved in six stage productions in the National Academy of Performing Arts’ (Napa) Young Directors Festival 2017, which even earned him the legendary Zia Mohyeddin’s praise.

The curtain opens

With his mother a government school principal, and father a government servant as well, Siddiqui had no one in his family that could inspire him to join the field of performing arts. It was a sad experience during school life that shaped his destiny, eventually turning him into the artiste he is today.

He recalls that when he was in the ninth grade, a new principal joined his school who started extracurricular activities, including drama, which had never been enacted in the school before.

He remembers that when some of his friends got a role to play, he also felt a strong desire to act, but what he got instead was the task of opening and closing the curtains between the scenes.

The experience was not very pleasant for him, but he hoped getting the chance to play some role the following year. Unfortunately, he was again told to operate the curtains in the 10th grade. “This ignited a fire inside me, and I felt desperate to prove that I can also perform,” he says.

After his Intermediate, he got admission in a BCom programme. He, however, decided to simultaneously continue with his passion for some kind of performance. He recalls looking for advertisements for male models and applying for jobs only to find fraudsters, who would take money from him and other candidates for holding fake auditions, or worse, predators.

Although the socioeconomic class to which he belongs does not generally consider the field of modelling an appropriate job, he had unflinching support from his parents during this phase.

He recalls his parents overseeing him and also being happy for him making such efforts because he had been an extremely introvert child, and they liked how he had been going out and meeting people to actualise his dreams.

Another major event during his BCom years was his writing a script for a television play. He feels that being an introvert, many of his inner feelings and emotions remain unexpressed, so writing acts as a cathartic tool for him.

He remembers going to a TV office to offer them his script, which was a comedy. Despite his multiple visits to the office, he was never told that his script had been approved, and he only found it was worthy when he accidentally saw it running on the channel, with him receiving no credit or payment.

The alma mater

It was around that time that Siddiqui heard of Napa and read the academy’s advertisement in a newspaper. He applied for admission in December 2009, gave an audition and was selected by the jury comprising Mohyeddin, Talat Hussain, Rahat Kazmi, Enwer Sajjad, Arshad Mahmud and Anjum Ayaz.

From 2010 to 2012, he completed his diploma at Napa. However, as his parents insisted that he should have a master’s degree, he also simultaneously completed his MBA at Muhammad Ali Jinnah University in the evening programme.

He recalls how tough Napa was. His batch initially had over 30 students, but only five of them, including him, graduated. In his last year at Napa, he again ventured into writing and came out with his first theatre play titled ‘Bay Naam Khandan’.

He also directed an in-house performance of that play, which was well received by his teachers. Soon after his graduation, he was offered the job of Talat Hussain’s teaching assistant at Napa.

Siddiqui calls himself “a plant nurtured by Zia Mohyeddin”. He also fondly remembers Zain Ahmed, Khalid Ahmed and Anjum Ayaz as his Napa teachers, and laments that Napa eventually lost all such great names following the change of management a few years ago.

He believes that the ACP has now become the most significant theatre institution in Karachi. He specifically praises how the council acted during the Covid-19 pandemic, managing to hold a theatre festival in 2020, providing much-needed encouragement to theatre artistes.

The performer

According to Siddiqui, he has been part of 78 theatre productions since his student days. The roles he has played include Antonio in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Imtiaz Ali Taj’s ‘Chacha Chakkan’, and Duke of Albany in Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’.

One of his most favourite roles is the one he played in ‘Sau Din Chor Ke’, an Urdu adaptation of Michael Cooney’s ‘Cash on Delivery’. He says that role cemented his position as a comedy actor, as before that he was known for serious roles at Napa.

Among the Urdu writers, he is a fan of Agha Hashr, Saadat Hasan Manto and Khwaja Moinuddin, who penned some of his favourite plays like ‘Rooh Ka Natak’ (by Manto) and ‘Sultan Ka Faisla’ (by Hashr).

Despite his many feats, Siddiqui humbly states he is nobody. One should refrain from praising oneself, he says, stressing that appreciation and praise be left to the audience, if they wish doing so.

As for now, he is committed to the craft of theatre, although due to financial and other reasons, many good thespians of Karachi have stopped or decreased working on the stage. After Siddiqui earned a reputation of being a good actor through his theatre performances, he was also offered TV roles. He did work for television but the experience was not very satisfying.

He thinks TV directors have to work under severe time constraints, due to which they are unable to do a reading of the script with the actors, an exercise that can help actors with characterisation.

Siddiqui is a proud teacher at the ACP who is trying to facilitate and encourage the younger lot. The play he is likely to direct in the coming festival is titled ‘CLUE’, and he chose to direct it because his students are involved in its production.