GWADAR: Women reigned on the second day of the Gwadar Book Festival as they performed plays on women’s rights, health and college life on Friday afternoon.

From 3pm to 6pm a group of performers from Karachi and Turbat University’s Gwadar girls’ campus took part in a play focusing on women’s health. The play involved children between the ages of six and 16 and revolved around the fact that it was about time women were considered a priority.

The underlying theme of the plays, performed by Rock the Band from Lyari and Gwadar girls’ campus, dealt with child marriage leading to early pregnancy and the norm of cheating in colleges.

The women at the Rural Community Development Centre’s (RCDC) auditorium seemed positive and responsive to the message of the play on child marriage, but said “men should also be made to watch such plays in order for them to understand what women go through”.

Others, while discussing the play titled Nauk a Bandak, based on the culture of cheating within colleges, were of the opinion that cheating on any level of education was “harmful to the entire education system and needs to be addressed by the education department”.

Of the two plays, the one on child marriage struck a chord with many women sitting in the audience. The play, titled Sheerzal, which means brave woman, began with a college graduate moving to a small town where she learns about a young girl in a precarious health condition.

After making some inquiries, she learns that the girl was possessed. Refusing to believe it, she speaks to the girl herself and is told that she was married off at an early age and now suffers from an incurable disease.

Taking a stand against the young girl’s family, she is told by her family to stop meddling in the norms of their society and leave.

The girl persists and ends up changing the age-old beliefs of the child’s parents and the neighbourhood, regarding the dangerous consequences of child marriage. Both plays were performed in Balochi.

“This is the first time the girls performed for a female audience,” said the organiser of the book festival, Nasir Rahim. He said that there was a theatre group in Gwadar, where men performed from time to time, but they only performed for men.

Similarly, he said, there was no representation of women in such plays. “I think it’s too early for our society to accept a play where women perform in front of a mixed gathering. Until that happens, we have children such as these ones from Karachi and Gwadar who show us how they view society and the prevailing norms for both men and women,” he added.

Short films on education, drug abuse, sports and unemployment were also screened by young filmmakers from Jiwani, Noshki, Pasni and Peshukan. The films were five to six minutes long, many of them focused on the themes of hope and fear of change.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2017