Four plays in review

The Arts Council, Karachi that Ahmed Shah has been leading for over a decade now, has become the most dynamic centre of art and culture in Pakistan. He has assembled a good team that includes names such as Dr Ayub Sheikh, Dr Fatima Hasan, Dr Tanveer Anjum, Shakil Jafri, and Shakil Khan – all dedicated individuals who are taking care of their respective domains.

The World Culture Festival spanning over a month attracted dance, drama, and music groups from dozens of countries. Despite serious health issues recently, Ahmed Shah worked tirelessly to make it a landmark series of events in the cultural history of Pakistan.

Being in Karachi affords one opportunities to attend numerous activities at the Arts Council. Dr Ayub Sheikh organised a memorial event to celebrate Mirza Qaleech Baig’s birthday. Dr Fatima Hasan is ably managing the Josh Malihabadi Library with her assistant Jamali. Dr Tanveer Anjum has taken an initiative to set up the Writers and Readers Cafe that has organised over 90 weekly meeting on diverse topics.

Shakeel Khan manages the administrative and logistic issues at the Arts Council Karachi and also hosts literary events. Recently he organised an event to remember Mustafa Zaidi – an Urdu poet who died at the age of just 40 but left a remarkable body of work to make his mark in the history of Urdu poetry. Ambreen Haseeb Ambar, and others read their analytical and informative papers on Mustafa Zaidi while Zehra Nigah presided over the event.

But here I share with my readers a very interesting discussion that young students of Iqra University held at the Writers and Readers Cafe on Oct 17. It was the 93rd weekly sitting of the café that Dr Tanveer Anjum organised at the Arts Council’s Josh library.

Avid reader and senior journalist Ghazi Salahuddin presided over the event that discussed four European plays by Chekhov, Ibsen, Pirandello, and Sartre. Since these plays occupy an exalted place in world literature and theatre lovers in most countries around the world have seen or staged theses plays, it appears worthwhile to share them with my readers. These plays first appeared on stage in a period spanning 65 years from 1879 to 1944.

Graduate student Anoshka Naveed discussed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s play ‘A Doll’s House’ that he wrote in 1879. This three-act play is set in a Norwegian town where a married woman felt that she lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfilment. Anoshka explained that in a male-dominated world of the 19th-century Europe the play stirred quite a controversy as the continent was under Victorian moral standards that did not encourage women to seek opportunities outside their homes. Though Ibsen denied that it was his intent to write a feminist play, it was a sensational drama for all those who loved to challenge male domination in society.

Since then the play has become a seminal work in the realm of theatrical literature. Norma Hemler is the protagonist – a seemingly happy and carefree mother and wife – with long-buried secrets and societal expectations. Her life takes a dramatic turn when the secrets come to light and according to the prevalent societal norms and gender roles she finds herself in an extremely embarrassing situation. The rigidly defined parameters for women in Europe were not very different from what is prevailing in Pakistan as Anoshka unfolded the intricacies of the play to her audience.

The theme of the play resonates in today’s Pakistan as gender inequality and imposed societal expectations lead to brutal consequences for women who try to break the shackles to enjoy individual freedom. Ibsen shows Nora attempting to embark on a journey of self-discovery by confronting her husband and deciding to leave her three children and husband by banging the door and walking out of her home. Anoshka was of the opinion that most women in Pakistan face this dilemma but cannot leave their homes because they lack the skills to survive or become financially independent.

Sajjad Hameed was the next student, and discussed ‘The Cheery Orchard’ by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Sajjad set the ground by discussing the condition of Russia at the turn of the century as the last play of Chekhov hit the stage in 1904. Interestingly, Chekhov described this play as a comedy but the first director of the play – Stanislavsky – treated it as a tragedy. The play begins with an aristocratic Russian landowner returning to her family estate which includes a large cherry orchard that is under severe debt and mortgaged.

The play exposes the landed gentry of Russia that was on the cusp of collapsing but refused to change or accept the new realities of an emerging capitalism. Sajjad was candid in his analysis of the play and gave some details of the transformation that was taking place in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Former serfs were no more ready to accept the cruelties of the feudal class and some had even raised themselves in their social status to be able to purchase the properties that the landlords were no more able to maintain.

Mahnoor Baloch dilated upon the Italian play ‘Six Characters In Search Of An Author’ by Luigi Pirandello. The play was first performed in 1921 just three years after the end of the First World War. The play brings in some new discussions on the absurdity of life and meta-theatre. Some consider this play as a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd that dominated the theatre world a couple of decades later. Though the play explores the relationship among authors and their characters, it also involves theatre practitioners in an interesting debate.

Mahnoor analysed the play in terms of its illogical progression and beautifully clarified its structure and ideas. The play follows six characters who interrupt a rehearsal in search of an author to complete their story. The characters appear to be the incomplete creations of a failed playwright who has abandoned them and now the characters are demanding that their stories be told and performed. Absurdist drama is not to the liking of this columnist so I better reserve my opinion of the play but the analysis that Mahnoor presented was delightful and informative.

Perhaps the best analysis of the event came from the last student Wajid Hussain who discussed ‘No Exit’ (Huis clos in French) that Jean Paul Sartre wrote in 1944 when France was under German occupation. It is an existentialist play that begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room.

Wajid began by describing the philosophy of existentialism that Sartre and his friends propounded and made major contributions to its popularity. The play depicts the afterlife of the three characters who are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. As Sartre famously put it ‘Hell is other people’.

Wajid was articulate and clear in his thoughts about how Sartre presented his ideas in the play regarding ‘the look’ and the never-ending struggle of ‘being’. The desire to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness is a theme that recurs in the play. The damned souls Garcin, Inez, and Estelle expect torture devices to punish them for eternity but none of them would initially admit the reason for their damnation. They hint at the mistakes they made but never want to divulge any details for fear of being degraded in the eyes of the others.

If you ask me to rank the plays, I would place ‘The Cherry Orchard’ by Chekhov at the top perhaps because I watched it in Moscow with its original text in Russian, and partly thanks to my own anathema to feudalism. ‘No Exit’ at the second place and ‘A Doll’s House’ at the third because it presents a one-sided view of important issues like corruption, forgery, and gender roles.

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets/posts @NaazirMahmood and can be reached at: mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk