KARACHI: Some of the plays staged at the ongoing Karachi Theatre Festival organised by the Arts Council of Pakistan are being performed for the first time. One of them, Tamasha, was performed on Saturday night.

An Urdu adaptation of Ray Cooney’s farce Funny Money, penned by Babar Jamal and directed by Uzma Sabeen, Tamasha is the story of a man Abid (Hammad Khan) who by chance picks up on a bus a briefcase full of five crore rupees. He gets back home and asks his wife (Erum Bashir), who is waiting for a guest couple that she’d invited for dinner, to pack her bags because they’re flying out. He, overjoyed, tells her about the bag with money. They have a bit of a debate about the morality of the issue but the wife finally agrees with the hubby. As they’re thinking of leaving, somebody knocks the door. The wife opens the door thinking it’s the expected guest; but it turns out a CID inspector is there to meet her husband. From here on, mistaken identities and some twists in the plot take the story forward, as is the case with most farcical dramas.

Talking to Dawn, Sabeen said, “We’re doing this play for the first time. It’s a funny script. I usually do comedies because these days seriousness is being imposed from every side, so it’s important to lighten up the mood. We want to raise questions through comedies. For example, the main character in this play is a shareef insaan [a morally forthright man] but we all know that when faced with such a temptation no one passes up on an advantageous opportunity. Even the most forthright person becomes unscrupulous.”

On the importance of arranging programmes such as the theatre festival, she argued, “It is of great significance, particularly in a period when people are afraid of a pandemic. They’re not socialising and are not even visiting each other’s homes. In such a situation it is good if an event like this is happening, following the standard operating procedures (SOPs) making the viewers sit in the hall with the gap of an empty seat.”

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2020