LAHORE: A 24-hour live performance charting the last day of a death row prisoner before his imminent execution was streamed live starting midnight on Oct 10 on the World Day Against the Death Penalty.

Actor/director Sarmad Khoosat portrayed the inmate, Prisoner Z, in the performance, titled No Time to Sleep, which was produced in collaboration between Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), Highlight Arts and Olomopolo Media. Sarmad’s real-life father, veteran actor Irfan Khoosat, played his reel-life father in a surprise that was only revealed when he appeared during the performance.

The set comprised a replica of an actual death cell where Prisoner Z was locked in solitary confinement. When the live stream began at midnight, Khoosat was seen sitting in his cell. He spent those 24 hours mostly waiting in silence, but also occasionally conversed with the guard who watched him, prayed, bathed, wrote on the walls and floor with chalk, laid down to rest intermittently and met his family for the last time.

After the performance, the actor enduring those 24 hours without a break, Sarmad Khoosat, told Dawn: “I’m glad the post-performance emotional effect occurred already two days ago during rehearsal. As much as my body was drained and soul exhausted after the warp, the strange feeling that I was at the same place where I arrived 26 hours earlier was very disturbing, and add to it the meltdown we all had afterwards. Time had stopped. The first emotion is you feel very vulnerable; I had also never experienced this collective spirit where the camera person broke down, the guard dropped to my feet; it was really unreal. Irrespective of what they felt about the content, the emotion was so genuine. This wasn’t an experience anybody had had before.”

As soon as he heard ‘cut’, Sarmad said he went totally blank. “I just wanted to see my sister (the director, Kanwal Khoosat). But I want everybody to know that I’m doing absolutely fine.”

Kanwal, the director of the performance, felt it was an overwhelming experience with the biggest challenge being making everyone realise how sensitive this project was and how important it was to tell the story without it being exploited at all. “Our biggest achievement is that it got completed. Those 24 hours were impossible to endure and most of us wanted to give up, but that’s what such performances are about. This performance developed our endurance.”

Talking about the challenges she faced during the performance, Kanwal said it was very important to keep the vulnerabilities of the performers in mind. “A huge challenge was the technology involved, as I found out that the live stream got disrupted a few times. I’m still immersed in the project and massively emotional. Every time I want to speak about it, I want to break down.”

No Time to Sleep was loosely based on the case of Zulfiqar, JPP’s first client, who spent 17 years on death row during which his execution was stayed more than 20 times. During the incarceration, Zulfiqar educated hundreds of prisoners and even secured 22 degrees and diplomas himself.

In the run-up to the performance, Dawn.com hosted a live blog for a couple of weeks running a prologue covering the various stages leading up to issuance of an execution warrant and how a prisoner is prepared for that moment, including filing of petitions in court, media coverage, the family being notified and meeting the prisoner for the last time.

According to JPP, the European Union ambassador to Pakistan, Jean-François Cautain, hosted a screening of the performance at his residence in Islamabad for journalists, civil society members and diplomatic community. No Time to Sleep was partially screened at the European Union parliament in Brussels, the Houses of Parliament in London, Cornell University in the US and UK’s Cambridge University.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2018