The writers of the play hope to amuse the audience with their new project. DESIGN: SAMRA AAMIR
Writer duo Rouvan Silogix and Ali Junejo, who were last seen making quite an impression through their play Man on the Black Horse at The Second Floor (T2F), are once again all set to stage a play in collaboration with the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) called A Portrait of Rumi.
Like their previous stage show, this play too, is based on the works of Jalaluddin Rumi. The young and ambitious pair has a rather absurd and experimental approach to writing much like their inspiration — the rebellious poet Rumi.
The Express Tribune sat down with the writers to get an overview of their upcoming theatrical, just an hour before rehearsal. When asked if their play will involve a lot of flashbacks in terms of its structure, Silogix says, “After many discussions, we decided to make it more mainstream with a proper linear narrative but it will still have some weird moments with a few surrealistic elements.”
Junejo believes that the audience will have to put in quite a bit of effort in understanding the essence of the play. “Everyone will have a good time but once you walk away, you’ll think, ‘wait, hang on, what did that particular character actually mean’,” he explains.
Similar to their earlier venture The Man on a Black Horse, which incorporated the ideas of Sigmund Freud throughout its narrative leaving the audience rather surprised, this one will not be short of a mash-up of psychoanalytical ideas either. “This time around, we have given it a psychological touch by integrating the ideas of the renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung,” says Silogix.
Building on the same topic, Junejo adds that Jung had developed the concept of archetypes and “confronting your own shadow,” that has been used as a bridge between Rumi and Jung in the play. “This is also an attempt to bring the thoughts of Jung to the forefront because people are more acclimatised with Freud instead of Jung who, unlike Freud, had a more spiritual take on mental problems” says Junejo.
Despite the fact that the script was written over a period of 12 days, it took months for the two of them to merge the thoughts of so many thinkers and find out an ideological common point that could come through theatrically. “It took us lots of arguments, white boards and diagrams — literally all sorts of things,” says Junejo. “Basically we finalised our central idea and then we went on to make sure that all the characters and the whole narrative goes through that common corridor.”
Regardless of how complicated the play sounds from what the writers share about its content, they strongly believe that it will be a very entertaining piece and the audience should expect a mixture of great visuals and performances. “People should expect some very beautiful visual artistry, gorgeous singing and a heavy dose of thinking” says Silogix. Junejo, on the other hand, believes that their writing will trigger a deep thinking process. “You should expect to be poked — you would be laughing, you would be enjoying but in the end of it you’ll have some part of you asking some strange questions and that pretty much summarises everything” says Junejo.
For now, A Portrait of Rumi sounds like a highly ambitious project by a bunch of youngsters who are emotional about the ideologies that they adhere to. However, the real challenge is to translate all this excitement and promise in a true theatrical manner.
The play stars Meher Jaffri, Osama Tahir, Sohail Malik, Joshindar Chaggar, Tara Mahmood, Faris Khalid, Rafeh Mahmud and Sarah Haider apart from Silogix and Junejo who will be playing Rumi. It is scheduled to take place daily from June 13 to 30 at 8pm at the Napa auditorium. This play is the second step in developing a long-term partnership between The Express Tribune and Napa, with the first initiative being a play called Stumped!!!
Published in The Express Tribune, June 11th, 2013.
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I loved the play. I understand that this genre may not appeal to everyone (i was the only one today giving a standing ovation) but even if that's the case, I think most of us can agree that the production and performances were excellent. Personally, I enjoyed the content a lot because we often don't realise how much baggage each one of us carries each day as a result of what we do and who we interact with, such baggage often causes a part of us to get locked up inside a cage, even though all we really want to do is just "fly away". Interestingly, we also struggle as individuals and as groups of friends to confront such baggage, which often makes it really difficult to open up, confront our demons, and put baggage in perspective so each one of us can move on and find some harmony. All dialogues with crazy patients, the crime, lawsuit, impact on personal relationships were weaved together really well in the script, and it all came together brilliantly well in the end. This is a very brave attempt, it's easy to make mass market products but it takes guts for artists to really put themselves out there. And that's what the Portraits of Roomi team did. In many ways the production team also reminds me of that bird in the cage and this play was them flying away. We can all have our interpretations, it doesn't really matter. What matters is celebrating brave attempts like this one. From where I was sitting, I finally saw a local production that I can say I'm truly proud of.
It was... not good.
Pretentious types trying to meld western psychology with eastern mysticism when they understand neither. The confused and pretentious offspring of colonialism.
What does a Pakistani with no knowledge of Persian literature and specifically Rumi's voluminous and prolific writing attempting to do with this play? Stick to local themes, characters and narratives that are relevant to the natives of the land. If you don't speak Persian/Farsi how can you do justice to the essence of Rumi?
Friends why do you hesitate to write the full name of the institution: National Academy of Performing Arts Karachi (NAPAK)
By the way ET needs to correct the title since its not going to be the Portrait of Rumi rather a caricature of poor Rumi.