Youth Drama Festival: Ibtida-e-Ishq ends in 2015

Play features Prince Saleem’s travel to different eras.

ISLAMABAD: Can old-fashioned romance withstand the test of time?

This seems to be the premise of “Ibtida-e-Ishq”, the second play in the week-long Youth Drama Festival staged at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts Tuesday evening.

Opening in a glamorous Mughal court, the play shows young Prince Saleem who is frustrated by his love life and needs an escape. To get some respite, he decides to hop on a time machine and travel to the future, a decision he later regrets.

Written by Saad Sultan and director by Hadia Ahmed, the play is a rollercoaster ride that travels between past eras and contemporary times in an ambivalent way. It shows how social values and state-of-affairs have deteriorated over the centuries.

Punctuated by both classic and modern music and dance, the lively performances kept audience roaring and at the edge of their seats for its tongue-in-cheek humor.

The play gets hilarious when the prince, accompanied by his trusted general Maan Singh, first lands in the era of the folk characters Heer and Ranjha and then in the 60s where he witnesses the romance of film-stars Shabnam and Nadeem. Finally, it is landing in 2015 that the prince realises he should never have left his own time. For in his own era, love did make sense.

To his disappointment, Saleem lands in eras that have changed for the worse with the combined menace of corruption, energy crises, materialism and terrorism. This in turn, leads him to an appreciation of his own era which was far more progressive and peaceful.

“The idea was to show how we have become desensitised to our socio-political situation in the current times and although the Mughal era is criticised for being frivolous in the common discourse, it was a far more tolerant one,” said Sultan.

While the 18-actor cast whipped up an entertaining show, the final sequence hit home for its poignant message, powerful dialogue and comic timing.

The lead characters are: Taha Humayun as Prince Saleem, Waseem Khan as Maan Singh and Muhammad Qasim, Aima Aftab as Heer and Nosheen Raees as Anarkali.

Ahmed, who spearheads the Comsats Performing Arts Society, said that she saw great potential for acting and music in the university students but not enough platforms to promote it which was why she had formed the society.

The play got a standing ovation coupled with thunderous applause. “The play transitioned very smoothly into all the different eras and I especially liked the message at the end. I think it’s very hard to knit such a strong message into a comic play so it’s a spectacular job that the team did,” said Bisma, an audience member.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2015.