|
|
|
Unspeakable acts
“We are the dispossessed.” These words from Julia Starzky’s poem echo in my ears as I quietly enter the room. A girl is the standing at the back reciting her lines from a script, while two other sit in front acting out their parts. Another woman sits cross-legged facing the actors, closely monitoring their performance. Without realizing, I step into the forbidden territory: a temprorary stage, as one of the actors quietly gestures me to vacate it. I quickly grab a place next to the woman who turns and gives me a smile before shifting her focus back to the rehearsal. She is Prasanna Ramaswamy, veteran Indian scriptwriter and director who has penned and directed Tehreek-i-Niswan’s Zikr-i-Nashunida that will be staged from March 10 to 14 at the PACC in Karachi and will begin at 8:00pm.
Zikr-i-Nashunida is a thought-provoking play that deals with the aftermath of war, its effects on human lives, particularly on women and children. Often, we encounter headlines screaming out the casualties of a war-ridden territory. But we tend to overlook it all. It’s war, we reason with ourselves; men on both sides are bound to die. Unfortunately, in the midst of it all, we tend to ignore the actual gist: the common people, families that are ruthlessly torn apart by wars. Victims of hate, callousness and greed. Victims of a needless tragedy.
And this is what Zikr-i-Nashunida has attempted to portray. The play is the first of its kind in Pakistan, as it looks at war not in terms of statistics and numbers, but what havoc war creates on ordinary people’s ordinary lives. There is no story and no identified characters — just human props that act out the concept of the play. “We hear about wars all the time,” says Sheema Kirmani, founder of Tehreek-i-Niswan, “but actually nobody’s doing anything to change this and to see that it does not keep on recurring.” As the title implies, the play is an attempt to sensitise the public on war and its repercussions, on a subject that has unfortunately become so inherent in our lives that we have become immune to it.
As is Ramaswamy’s style, the different acts of the play are derived from various texts, divided by eras, people and centuries but bound by a single factor: war and its impact on human lives. It could be the trojan women of 4000 B.C., or the Vietnamese women of the last century, or perhaps the helpless thousands that fall between the two who had to bear the wrath of war. Skilfully threaded by the writer, the different acts of Zikr-i-Nashunida propels its viewers towards a profound thought process. It pushes people to think beyond themselves into realms that may seem foreign now, but could well be their plight tomorrow if no measures are taken to curtail it.
The images evoked through singing, poetry, a gripping script and the music that is created by the actors themselves, leave its mark that haunts the audience into taking actual measures rather than pay lip service to eradicate this evil.
Of the cast, one would say Mahvash Faruqi was by far the best. It was a treat to watch her character transform from an agonized mother whose infant child is snatched from her, to a confident, femme fatale of today, voicing her protest against the injustices meted out to women. The rest of the cast put up quite an admirable performance as well, although a few cracks still showed in the performances which will hopefully be cemented before the play goes on stage on March 10. However, what steals the show is not the performances, but an extremely graphic script. Ramaswamy has left little to the imagination as she graphically capitulates the terrifying atrocities belted out to the Vietnamese as witnessed by a woman, Phan Ti Mao — a reminiscent of the Mai Lai tragedy. What made even more interesting was that not one, but five actresses performed the role of Phan Ti Mao, perhaps to stress that thousands of Fonte Moas suffer in this world where women are generally regarded as mere commodities.
Hopefully, this 100-minute discourse will serve as a platform for those who advocating peace, and will be an eye-opener for those too wrapped in themselves.
|
|
|
|
