To observe the 18th annual World Day Against the Death Penalty, a storytelling performance was streamed live online on Saturday evening based on four original short stories written by acclaimed journalist and author Mohammad Hanif.

In the stories, narrated in first person by actor-director Sarmad Khoosat, four death row prisoners recount the events that led to them landing in jail, the manipulation by the powerful and how the justice system failed them, while they await the moment they would be sent to the gallows at dawn.

Aptly titled ‘Before The Sun Comes Up’, the special project was produced by Justice Project Pakistan in partnership with Dawn.com. The performance aimed at highlighting the plight of over 4,000 death row prisoners in Pakistan, many of them with no access to effective legal representation and/or resources to engage counsel.

The performance, lasting a little over an hour, comprised four short stories, each about 10-minute long and spaced out in between by three to four minutes to allow the puppeteer to prepare for the next.

As the performance began, a curtain of sorts opened to reveal the title of the show, followed by a slide displaying paper cut-outs/puppets of two men and two women, representing the central characters of the stories to follow.

“Are you in a lockdown? We are too," say the characters, with Sarmad as their voice narrating their suffering. The lockdown due to Covid-19 was compared with the incarceration that the characters call their lockdown — one that they know will end, before the sun comes up. “Are you wearing a mask? We are waiting that we’ll be forced to wear a mask so that you don’t see our faces, so that you don’t see who you’re killing,” they continue.

As the first story, ‘The Readymade Killer’, began, the screen split into four: one displaying the title and the remaining three depicting objects and figures as they were being brought up in the story.

‘The Readymade Killer’ is about a man who is asked to follow and keep an eye on “a girl with short hair" because his “friends who were his masters” asked him to. He wanted to kill her, but did not have a reason enough to. When she is eventually killed, he is caught and sentenced to death during an in camera trial.

Objects such as a ticking clock, a rat, scissors explaining the girl’s haircut, large eyes meant to depict the eyes of the public on the prisoner, a gun scrolled through the three parts of the screen as the story progressed. In the bilingual narration, the prisoner talks about a conversation with his lawyer, the injustice of the in camera trial that landed him on death row. “Can there be justice without truth?” he asks his lawyer and requests for an open trial.

The second story, ‘The Prisoner Who Did Something’, then begins after a short interval. This is about a woman who only asked for water while working in the fields, but people said she had committed a horrible crime. She was sentenced to death following an in camera trial and kept in solitary confinement for fear of being killed by other inmates.

“They don’t want you to know what I didn’t do; they don’t want you to know what they did,” begins the narration.

Figures depicting a sword, the gallows, a child, a woman in fields appear as they featured in the story. The woman wonders to her lawyer what her crime was. He tells her she was disrespectful. She says she was only working in the fields and asked for water. She also narrates the ordeal of her minor children, living in hiding for fear of being killed. She also mentions a powerful man in suit who came to see her in prison, had his picture taken with her, extended support to her, got death threats for it and was eventually killed. She says she was scared when she got the news of his killing, scared for her own fate.

The third story, ‘The Man Who Had One Job’, is about a cleaner at some important office, where he isn’t allowed to touch expensive murals and carpets. He is asked to buy huge plastic sheets and cover a room with them. Later, he is asked to take the bloodied sheets back with him. He is eventually sentenced to death for being accessory to murder.

During the narration, puppets and paper cut-outs representing plastic sheets, carpets and murals, a bonesaw, mobile phone are shown as the story rolls out. The prisoner says he was told he was part of an international murder that almost caused a war and was all over world news; his fingerprints on the plastic sheets, and how his family was told to accept compensation money.

The last story, ‘The Lucky Woman’, is about a widow who raises four sons, all of whom eventually abandon her. Her last wish is to go on a pilgrimage. One day she’s visited by a son’s close friend who offers to send her on the pilgrimage and gives her a bag to carry. When she reaches her destination, her bag his opened at the airport and some things are found that she claims aren’t hers. She was sentenced to death. The puppets/objects displayed to explain this story included framed photographs, a suitcase, date trees, and the four sons.

The production, which was streamed live on Dawn.com, brought together artists from two countries who performed the entire show live on the meeting app Zoom. The haunting, eerie music playing in the background was arranged by Hailey Beavis and the puppetry was performed brilliantly by Emma Brierley — from their homes in Edinburgh, Scotland. The performance was conceived by poet and artist from Golden Hour Productions, Ryan Van Winkle.