KARACHI: The art of acting is a form of expre­ssion which allows the artist to assume a character that takes him away from his own natural attributes as a person.

The phrase ‘art reflects life’ is, arguably, best described by virtue of acting. What if the line between art and life gets so much blurred that the two become one despite, seemingly, being mutually exclusive? That’s how the play Circle Mirror Transformation written by the Pulitzer winning playwright Annie Baker and directed by Bonnie Jean Evans performed on Wednesday evening at the Arts Council of Pakistan.

The story of the play is set in an acting class — spanning six weeks — held at a community centre. There are four students, Lauren (Hannah DiBella), Theresa (Sarah Helen Dilla­more), James (Alex Liu) and Shcultz (Christopher Kelly). When the curtains are drawn they’re seen lying on the floor counting numbers. They mix them up and the next scene shows that a woman, Marty, (Erica Lauren Wise) is giving them instructions. In the beginning, it all comes across as a rather innocuous group. All four come from different backgrounds and all of them, like any human being, have back stories. As the tiny little exercises take momentum, and as the characters are fleshed out and role play takes place, things become complicated. Sin­ce it’s an acting class, the masks rem­ain on for a decent amount of time. However, once the masks start to come off, the story enters a serious realm… without losing out on it funny bits. This means, issues such as relationship failures, loveless marriage, unca­red childhood and childhood abuse are talked about. Once that happens, the vulnerability of all those in the classroom, both as acto­rs/instructor and their own selves, comes out in the open.

Circle Mirror Transformation is an intelligently crafted play. The thing that appeared to be lacking on Wednesday, perhaps because the group may not have had enough time to acclimatise to local conditions, is the kind of energy that’s required for such a psychologically-driven script. Voice projection of actors was a little on the down side. Some of the lines that one felt could have been spoken with emphasis were just… spoken.

Nonetheless, such a production can teach the local audience and theatre practitioners about how the unravelling of characters is done without making a conscious effort to unravel them.

The play pr­e­s­ented by Spain’s Blue Book Thea­tre Company was part of the council’s ongoing World Culture Festival.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2024