And the award goes to…

Ten day Youth Drama Festival staging various social issues comes to end.

The Youth Drama Festival ended here on Tuesday with the awards ceremony at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA).

The students of local universities demonstrated their artistic performance at the 10-day event dramatizing various social issues.

The best play award was conferred on the Federal Urdu University’s play ‘Nisar Mein Teri Gallion Kay Aey Watan’. The play also won the awards for ‘best direction’ and ‘best production’.

In second place came the slightly gender-bending (if only in the roles) “Mein Abhi Farig Nahin Hun” by the Postgraduate College for Women, 6th Road Rawalpindi, with its lead actress bagging the ‘best actress’ award. Quaid-i-Azam University’s ‘Hire Fire’ following suit with its lead actor getting the ‘best actor award.

Of course out of the selection  the Federal Urdu University’s  play “Nisar Mein Teri Gallion Kay Aey Watan” staged on Monday lost much of its message and appeal when it turned into a jingoistic, finger pointing tableau. The play portrayed many of the current social and political issues in the country. But the reservations that one had with it was its fumbling, biased look, at times bordering on the repugnant. But it seems that regardless of this, the play still had quite an effect with the audience and the judges, being greeted by resounding applause on the day and with the announcement, nearly half of the Urdu University swarming the stage, ecstatic with their victory. To be fair though, compared to most of its competition, ‘Nisar Mein...’ had all the elements of a good stage production and exhibited an understanding of the festivals given format but its faux pas remained indelible.

Based on a famous line from Faiz, the play, set in a nameless alley, presents a microcosm of the country quite commendably, the various parts of the act coming together rather well. This ‘Gali’, this miniaturised world, bears witness to all that is plaguing the country, from bribery to sugar shortage to provincialism and even the unrest in Swat. A terrorist attack soon silences this noisy alley; the embodiment of Pakistan, an old, hunched man, walking among the dead, weeping and beating his breast.

Up to this point the play exceeds its expectations as a ‘student’ effort. But this achievement is soon   undermined in the ensuing mudslinging mess that later acts turn into. As a young girl banters with a vendor, a suited individual slithers into the scene, his anglicised Urdu and hubris indicative of the dreaded ‘Foreign Hand’. What follows is in absolute poor taste as the foreigner is shown conspiring with a dhoti clad ‘Krishna’.  The vulgar caricature of another religion in the current national concern for showing respect to what people hold to be sacred seemed hollow as a considerable section of our population belongs to this target community.

In their remarks on the occasion both the Minister of Culture and the director general of the PNCA, were pleased with the outcome of the festival and promised to continue with it. It would be wise to expand the purview of the festival to be truly ‘national’, inviting participants from all over the country and keeping the format and the language free.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2011.