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IN these days of death and darkness, one can only be grateful that there are still lots of people willing to put in time and effort to keep the show going.
The curtains went up last week in Karachi on a production of Grease. While fans of the classic must be loving the fact that the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies are working their charm on the local stage, those who often have reason to complain about Pakistani theatre productions’ limitations, particularly technically, are probably pleased, too; this production holds its own on most counts, with skilful attention having been paid to aspects such as choreography and light-design.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the earth in New York, the opera Thumbprint was recently staged for eight nights in a Manhattan basement theatre. It should be of interest to Pakistan since it is inspired by the story of Mukhtaran Mai. Though the production did not get too warm a response, reviewers have appreciated Indian-American composer Kamala Sankaram’s score, which combines South Asian and Western music.
According to news reports, the set is simple: a backcloth doubles up as a film projection screen and with a few chairs and charpais, “the heat, the dust and the traditions of a Pakistani village” (according to the AFP news report) are communicated.
My first reaction on reading the news items was, what could someone sitting in America possibly know about the heat, dust and traditions of a village in Punjab? And yet, that is not a judgement I should be making. The creators of the opera will have interpreted events and emotions as they deemed fit from the bare facts of the case, and as in every creative endeavour, they have an absolute right to do so.
Unless claims of total authenticity are made in terms of cultural fare, such as in the case of a documentary, I don’t believe criticism is justified. (The film Zero Dark Thirty, to take another example, came under heavy fire here for inaccuracies of dress, language and so on. But since the film has never claimed to be anything other than a fictionalised account, why should it not be as its creators thought fit? The audience that the film primarily targets and earns its money from, after all, doesn’t care whether the actors were speaking Urdu or Arabic.)
The reservation that I can express about Thumbprint, though, even without seeing it, is on the basis of the appropriation of voice. Has that production, and by extension the theatre of another country, appropriated for itself the story of a Pakistani woman’s ordeal and remarkable subsequent fortitude? And in doing so, has it added its own colour to the story? Such colour, once there, is difficult to wash out of cultural consciousness and often ends up becoming the more talked about discourse.
But then, why should they not have done that? It is not like many people here are telling this story or similar ones, ie creating cultural fare out of the experiences and emotions that are the product of modern-day Pakistan. It is such fare that would impress ever-deeper into the public consciousness the issues that we face, and cause people to confront the societal mindset that needs to change if the future is going to have a different trajectory.
The news tells the truth, and makes us aware of the issues. But it’s the stories, told well, told through books and films and theatre, that change mindsets. It’s the stories that last. And Pakistanis are not in adequate numbers telling their own stories.
In some niche areas, this is not true. Recent years have seen a flurry of books, for example, by Pakistanis writing about their country and the world as they have encountered it. Trouble is, most such work is in English, and therefore cannot be expected to sink into the societal consciousness to any appreciable degree.
There are similarly several films that discuss the Pakistan of the here and now, such as Main Hoon Shahid Afridi or Zinda Bhaag that have drawn international attention. These and several others are indeed being held up as a turning point for the Pakistani cinema industry. Of reasonable standard though they are, I’m afraid that, being largely independent productions, they cannot be called a “revival of the industry” — the film industry is Lollywood, and that remains as much in the doldrums as ever.
When the industry starts putting out films in appreciable numbers, and of similar standards, that play in dozens of cinemas in small towns and villages, that’s when it can be considered in the process of revival. And when screens in Chichawatni or Sukkur or Vehari start reflecting the modern Pakistani experience, that’s when it will be possible to say that the cinema industry is telling our stories.
Anyone reading this is by virtue of linguistic ability already part of a small elite. In these elites, the narrative of modern Pakistan does sporadically get told. So it’s easy to forget that there’s a much greater public that should be dwelling upon the story of a woman gang-raped at the behest of a village council, the teenager who died stopping a suicide bomber, or the policeman who was killed because he refused to soften his approach towards violent extremists.
Pakistan needs desperately to tell its stories, and shout ’em out loud.
The writer is a member of staff.
