Ajoka to reach ‘Destination: USA’

Play Amrika Chalo will be performed from Jan 23 to 24 as part of a cultural festival

KARACHI: The Davis Performing Arts Center and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at the Georgetown University will be staging Ajoka theatre’s satirical play Amrika Chalo. It is a joint initiative between the Theater Performance Studies Program and the School of Foreign Service.

The play will be performed from January 23 to 24 as part of their event Myriad Voices: A Cross-Cultural Performance Festival.

Amrika Chalo, which has been penned and directed by Shahid Nadeem, is a comedy is set in the visa office of the US Embassy in Islamabad and explores US-Pakistani relations and the several stereotypes associated with it.

The production is set to feature 10 Pakistani artists from the Ajoka Theatre and will also include artists from the university and guest artists from the DC area.

“Amrika Chalo (Destination: USA) is a hilarious satire that aims to rise above the blame game and enable its audience to laugh at their own hypocrisy and double standards,” said Shahid Nadeem in a press release.

Professor Derek Goldman of the Theater Performance Studies Program believed that Nadeem’s performance could not have been more “timely” in light of the recent tragic killings at Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

He praised Nadeem for taking up “challenging issues” from extremism to blasphemy laws and women’s rights in Pakistan.

The good news for Nadeem  dosesn’t end here as following Amrika Chalo’s US premiere, the National Theatre in London will be producing Dara, an adaptation of a play written by Nadeem. This will be the first time that the company will be adapting a play scripted by a South-Asian playwright.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2015.

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