KARACHI: There’s something magical about movement on stage, especially when the entire story that’s being played out in front of a large audience doesn’t have any verbal exchange of ideas among protagonists and depends largely on choreography.

The first international theatrical piece that took place at the Pakistan International Theatre Festival, organised by the Arts Council, on Saturday evening was entitled Through the Waves presented by the Uplift Theatre Group which has come down to Karachi all the way from the US to participate in the event.

An ensemble-directed performance, the play deals with, for want of a better word, heartache. Usually, heartaches are caused by someone leaving their loved one(s). The leaving part can happen through differences between the main characters or because of a tragic unexpected incident. Either way, it’s painful.

The three main performers — Hannah Gaff, Juilana Frick and Nicholette Routhier — do a remarkable job in conveying the tale of a woman who is trying to come to terms with the loss of her soul mate (soul mate is mentioned in the description of the play on the brochure provided to the audience by the council). This means the artists need to interpret two factors: loss and soul mate. They do a convincing job of doing so for it is not easy to highlight them with just action and reaction of the bodies. Why? Because the physicality of a body doesn’t usually represent the intangible aspects of life that it embodies — happiness, sadness, indifference etc. It is in that context that Gaff, Frick and Routhier do impressively well.

The metaphor of the ‘waves’, let’s expand it to the sea, is smartly used. Instead of depicting it visually (for example, as a backdrop of sorts) the directors create haunting sounds of the crashing waves and dripping water to evoke the emotional ebb and flow of the characters. The students of literature know that water symbolises rebirth. This was dealt with in a reverse order by T S Eliot in his poem The Wasteland where he writes, The dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief/ And the dry stone no sound of water. In the case of Through the Waves, water is seen as energy-giver as well as the harbinger of doom. But at the heart of it all, is the three performers’ commitment to their craft which, with just a single prop on stage — a table — and well worked-out choreography, keep the audience invested in the story.—

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2023