March 29, 2002	Friday	Muharram 14, 1423

KARACHI, March 28: Goethe Institut will hold talks on the September 11 happenings in seminars and discussion programmes so that subjects, such as “Islam and the West”, that are being discussed all over the world could be explored.

This was announced by the new director of the Goethe Institut, Dr Marla Stukenberg, at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday.

Flanked by Goethe Institut programme coordinator Ali R. Akhtar and programme secretary Ayesha Qadeer, Ms Stukenberg said she would be in contact with her partners in the city, and if they agreed to hold seminars, the Geothe Institut would go ahead with its plans.

Answering a question, she said the Goethe Institut would intensify its activities, and programmes would be organized in collaboration with other institutes in the city.

When asked why the Goethe Institut had not been as proactive as other cultural centres, such the Alliance Francaise and the British Council, she said that, to begin with, the Goethe Institut did not believe in quantity. “The Goethe Institut’s philosophy is that a few good programmes are better than many programmes.”

Secondly, she said, the Goethe Institut had been organizing programmes. “A few days ago we had a discussion. We had some other events some days back.”

She announced that two plays — “Moby Dick” and “A friend for Boltan the lion” — would be staged in the city in the first week of April. She said that Theater Triebwerk Hamburg, a theatre group founded in 1995 in Hamburg, would stage the plays.

“The theatre group’s repertoire includes plays for children, teenagers and adults with live music performance. The group is on a tour of South Asia and will be performing in Pakistan for the first time.”

Answering a question, Ms Stukenberg said that Theater Triebwerk Hamburg should not be compared with the Gripp’s Theatre which had been operating in the city for a long time. Expressing sorrow over Gripp’s Theatre director Yasmin Ismail’s death, she said that Theater Triebwerk Hamburg was different from the Gripp’s Theatre.

The Goethe Institut programme coordinator, Ali R. Akhtar, spoke about the plays. He said Herrman Melville’s Moby Dick had been made into a play. “This award-winning production from Germany of classic adventure brims with music, wit and imagination. Three brilliant actor-musicians recreate the perilous life of the sailors, taking us on a heart-stopping journey into the world of whales.”

He said the second play, titled “A friend for Boltan the lion”, was based on the book of the same title by Klaus Kordon. The plays, he added, would be staged on April 6 and April 7 respectively.