Intolerance at large: ‘Prophetic’ Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban staged

Play highlights intolerance and extremism in Pakistan.

LAHORE:

The Ajoka Theatre, in collaboration with the Lahore Arts Council, on Wednesday staged Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban directed by Madeeha Gauhar. The play was first performed in 1992.

This play is one of a series of plays that will be staged in Lahore this month.

It highlights intolerance and extremism in the society. Three masked men and three local clerics hang several people hauled up during moral policing.

“It was almost 20 years ago. The fire of intolerance was not so widespread but we could judge which direction we were headed in,” says Shahid Nadeem who wrote the play. “Unfortunately, over the years things have aggravated. The play proved to be quite prophetic,” he says.

Nadeem says the inspiration for the play came from cases like that of Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, 80, who had been charged with blasphemy and a Faisalabad teacher who had also been charged with the same offence.

Teachers, social workers and poets are frequent targets. Towards the end, a female character sitting in the audience questions the narrator, saying that “I am a Tamashai (one of the viewers) “ to which the leader responds then sit down and watch the drama.

“Ravi is an important part of folk theatre. The play tries to show how opinion leaders in our society   journalists, politicians and intellectuals – do not try to stop social atrocities,” says Nadeem. “These people comment from a distance but the reality is when a fire spreads, nobody is safe,” he says.

The play has varied examples of injustice. It tries to explain how intolerance affects lives.

It tries to develop an understanding of the problems that engulf our lives. The drama will again be staged on October 23.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2012.