Local faces, global figures

Many commercial theatres display photographs which are pictures of Indian actors, replace their faces with local ones.

LAHORE: When you pass by a commercial theatre in Lahore, you’re bound to come across a giant sized banner with alluring photographs of female stage actors and yet somehow there’s something terribly off about the picture — and then it makes sense, the face doesn’t match the body.

On further enquiry, you realise it just a simple computer trick, a technique to attract theatre goers and draw in an audience.

Commercial theatres have used the display of picturesque banners that display ongoing and upcoming plays with performing artistes for a long time now and technological shifts have brought graphic designers with new innovative technique to make and create posters. Many commercial theatres now display photographs on banners which are actually cut outs  of famous Indian models or actors and replace their faces with those of stage stars.

“Sometime people wonder why a particular stage female actor looks so slim and smart in photographs on the banners, while on stage she doesn’t quite look the same. This is because our graphic designers have started using computers now. Earlier our banner designers were primarily painters who would rely on their paint and brush instead of the famous Adobe Photoshop,” a commercial theater producer who didn’t want to be named told The Express Tribune.

Another producer requesting anonymity said, “This is a publicity tactic. Many a time it happens that film directors screen those scenes in trailers that show some guest star who in fact do not even play an important role in the production. The banners are just meant for publicity.”

However, this practice is not followed at Lahore Arts Council (LAC) where small sized banners showing just the faces of the stars are allowed to be displayed. “This is done to avoid obscenity. The large sized banners displayed outside LAC right on The Mall which show female actors in awkward poses look very odd,” an official of LAC said.

According to the stage manager of Alhamra the art of banners to publicise a commercial play has changed over the yeas. “We here at Alhamra ensure that no obscene photographs are displayed but we cannot ensure this at other commercial theatres,” he maintained.

Chaudhary Zulfiqar Ahmad, Commercial Theatre Producers Association Chairman was asked about the banner trend and conceded that many producers ask designers to fit local stars’ faces on the pictures of some famous Indian model or female actor. “Yes it happens that the body of Ashwariya Rai has the face of Nargis. Of course Rai has a style and physique that is impossible to match but this is difficult for theatre goers to accept after seeing these banners,” he said.

Ahmad said that in the 1980s it was common practice for theatres to display the names of the performing artistes in a play on a banner or notice board. “In the 1990s producers started using photographs of the artistes on the banners. Normally there were certain painters who would make these banners but after 2000, the computer started changing everything and by 2005 almost everything ranging from the design of the banner to their colour scheme was all done by a graphic designer sitting at a computer. However, the phenomenon of having pictures of models and replacing their faces with the local artistes is new and I don’t support it,” he added.

Fiaz Sialwi, is one of the famous graphic designer’s who works for commercial theatre producers and said, “We do it on the demand of producers. We cannot be blamed for depriving painters of their jobs because we are just doing our job. We have a skill and do what we are asked to do by the producers.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2011.