KARACHI: Arguably, one of the most eagerly awaited plays of the ongoing Pakistan Theatre Festival organised by the Arts Council of Pakistan was the Iranian group Petvazh’s production titled Tik Tak, penned by Mahdi Salehyar and directed by Ahmad Nadafi. There’s a reason for it: Iranian culture has been a great influence in shaping the subcontinent’s literary and artistic landscapes. The Urdu language, as many languages spoken in South Asia, has Persian words in them. The culinary and sartorial tastes in our part of the world, too, are derived from Persian influences.

The story of Tik Tak which was presented on Tuesday evening at the council’s main auditorium underlines the physical and to a certain extent psychological effects of a war. The play unfolds with two characters — a man and a woman — on stage, and a screen on top on which pre-recorded video messages delineate scenes with commentary on a battlefield.

Before the beginning of the play, a young man explained in Urdu to the audience the plot of Tik Tak. It has a soldier as the central character who has been posted as a guard at a tower in a war-torn area. His wife is perturbed by his absence for more than a year and wants him back in her life. When she begins to sense that anticipating his return can be an exercise in futility, she goes to the tower. In the meantime, an enemy soldier is captured. When the two men confront each other, the woman tries to put forward the argument that the two individuals have nothing personal to fight for.

They are in a violent situation not of their own volition. Her arguments fetch nothing and the tale meets a sad end.

Penned by Mahdi Salehyar, Tik Tak staged during Pakistan Theatre Festival

Tik Tak at heart has the noble message of the uselessness of violence. In one of the scenes shown on the screen, a young man says (which the audience got to read in English subtitles) that those he killed or those who wanted to kill him, were all nice people.

The cast that took part in the play included Maryam Alsadat, Alireza Kaghazgaran, Reza Azamirad and Mahdi Sarsangi Aliabad. They did a decent job, especially those who were on stage because they had to tread a fine line between the seriousness of the subject and the lighter, a bit comedic, vein in which they were conversing with one another.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2023