KARACHI: Friends, colleagues and admirers of the critically acclaimed playwright, actor and director Kamal Ahmed Rizvi went down memory lane to highlight his achievements and personality traits at an event held to remember him at the Arts Council on Wednesday evening. Mr Rizvi passed away on Dec 17, 2015.

Eminent artist, theatre person and former head of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts Naeem Tahir, who had flown in from Lahore, said it was wrong to suggest that Mr Rizvi had died. He said now that literary luminaries and scholars like Jawaid Iqbal, Intizar Husain and Kamal Rizvi were no more, he was increasingly feeling lonely. He then recalled the time when he came to Karachi to do a play at Theosophical Hall and didn’t know who to seek help for logistics; and suddenly the distinguished playwright Khawaja Moinuddin came to his rescue.

Mr Tahir said Mr Rizvi came to Lahore in 1956 or 1957. At the time Zia Mohyeddin was doing and casting for an Urdu adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar. It was then that Mr Mohyeddin cast Mr Rizvi in the role of Casca. From then on Mr Rizvi became part of that impassioned group of artists who wanted to do theatre in Lahore.

Mr Tahir said in the early period of his career in Lahore, there weren’t any original scripts for theatre. So one day he went to writer Bano Qudsia and requested her to write a play for him. After initial deliberation she obliged and wrote a play titled Ik Terey Aane Se. Mr Rizvi played the lead role in that production, therefore, he said, he was the hero of his first original play. After that, he said, an intense relationship with the actor and writer began.

Mr Tahir said Rizvi came across as an aloof person, but he was not. He remained aloof from those who did not see fine art in a favourable light, he said. He was of the view that Mr Rizvi had great determination for his creative work and he never flinched back from that position. He lauded Mr Rizvi’s wife Ishrat’s in ably supporting her husband in his life.

Mr Tahir said unlike the time when he started doing theatre, today there was a big number of actors and writers. While they were earning a living out of their work, the challenge for them was to earn respect for their profession, he said, because even now people shied away from renting out houses to actors or getting their sons and daughters married to people from showbiz. He said he wished that Intizar Husain, who passed away on Feb 2, could write a play for him, but Intizar sahib wrote one for Mr Rizvi (Khwabon Ke Musafir) and rightly so; Rizvi did justice to it. However, he said, he was fortunate that his son Faran Tahir (who is a known Hollywood actor) began his career with Khwabon Ke Musafir.

Music composer Arshad Mahmud said Rizvi belonged to that unbroken tradition in which artists were thought to be members of one community (qabila). He said there was disconnect in the later generation. He said whatever Mr Rizvi wrote as a playwright was unique. He had his own way of looking at society’s foibles. Referring to his interesting way of teaching his colleagues, he said once Mr Rizvi said to him that he (Mahmud) was like the front wheel of an auto-rickshaw which didn’t know who was travelling in the cabin.

Arts Council’s Ahmed Shah said Mr Rizvi came from that group of people who were connected with each other. He said not much had been talked about the iconic TV play Alif Noon which Mr Rizvi had penned and starred in. He said the satirical drama series had a significant impact on society.

Dr M. Raza Kazim said Mr Rizvi’s dialogue writing had spontaneity and his humour was of the highest quality. He said he knew the art of how to capture the (viewers’) imagination. He also pointed out that his plays had an element of existential agony in them.

Bakhtiar Ahmed, Wakeel Farooqui, Begum Khursheed Hameed, Munawwar Saeed, Iqbal Latif, Dr Alia Imam, Zaheer Khan, Ali Rzivi, Prof Sahar Ansari, Talat Husain, Ishrat and Haseena Moin also spoke.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2016