As in previous Festivals, each night saw multiple shows running simultaneously in several camps and halls throughout the Alhamra Cultural Complex. The main event each night centered on music being played in the open-air theatre by a variety of national and international performers. Due to security fears, attendance was lower than in previous years, though Rock Night, with Ali Azmat headlining, managed to pull a more-than-decent crowd. And performer Farhad Humayoun (of Overload), and his mother, educationist Naved Shahzad agree about the spirit of the event and its attendees. Naved said, "I attend the World Performing Arts nearly every year and this year we have had packed halls during Abida Parveen or Overload's performances. It's really a people's mela where everybody can afford to come irrespective of their age, class and economic condition. Rafi Peer has opened up the window into the world of arts and turned the cultural atmosphere around. They should be given a gold medal for the kid of work they do. They are not worried and are not scared at all. The bomb blasts that happened a night before the closing ceremony were an encroachment on private lives of the people. But, gladly it had a counter effect as people attended the closing ceremony with zeal and proved that they can't live their life in fear. I am so proud of the Peerzada family and the people who supported them for this festival."
Farhad was all encouragement, "There was so much security, but such a stupid thing couldn't be taken care of. We have to blame someone and so I blame the government. Festivals like these give happiness to people but now it's like a crime to be happy in Pakistan. There were families there so they could have a good time and what else can they do? Sit at home? It isn't even safe at home. It's encouraging that Rafi Peer went on with the show, besides the blasts. They were getting bomb threats way before the festival but they still went on and this goes to show how credible the festival is. There were people from India, Scandinavia, England and other places. The governor was around and the government doesn't have surveillance to review this? It's a sad state of affairs."
Interestingly, the performances by Shazia Mirza and Chicago-born American-Desi comedian Azhar Usman gathered some of the largest crowds of any performance, with the possible exception of Nawab Sahib Qibla. A Peerzada production, Nawab Sahib Qibla starred an accountant who advises the self-indulgent Nawab to get a real job in order to support his luxurious, indolent lifestyle. There were but four actors who yet did such a tremendous job it was impossible to actually see the actor; all that the audience witnessed was a Nawab, his scheming manservant and the savvy but simple girl-servant. The play is a strong, explicit satire of the feudal mindset and lifestyle and was one of the strongest draws at the Festival.
While not explicitly given a theme, each Festival, by virtue of the nature of its performances, gives off a certain atmosphere. This year, despite the general climate of insecurity permeating Lahore, was a friendlier, more personal event as groups from all over the world converged on Lahore. Tight security around the Festival did not impede the flow of people into and out of the event (though better parking could have been arranged) and the relative safety of the event itself meant that performers and audiences mingled quite freely inside the Complex. An example of this occurred when a bearded gentleman, wearing Sindhi cap, waistcoat, and shalwar kurta, came up to the comedian Azhar Usman and thanked him for his performance. Similar appreciation was shown to Shazia Mirza by uncles, aunties, and pretty young things and in equal measure to the members of the Iranian puppet troupe. Interaction between first-time performers and their audiences, as well as the surprising availability and 'there-ness' of the organizers, created a more personal atmosphere than in previous Festivals: a happy consequence of the security fears that surrounded the Festival.
I was wowed by the performances given by the two stand-up comedians, the Dickens company from the UK (consisting of a sole actor performing a pastiche of Dickens' work), the Austrian dance troupe Editta Braun, and Ekjute Theater's "Naatiks". Lone actors, with only props and audience participation to guide them, performed all of these, with the sole exception of the Eritta Braun Company.
In typical German fashion, the Editta Braun dancers concentrated on the anomie felt by modern man in relation to his perpetual "race against time". While confusing, the audience could not help but feel it was being shown avant-garde theatre, and thus sat stolidly throughout the performance.
The attendees of the Ekjute Theater plays showed far greater appreciation. This company, a dramatic troupe from across the border, centered in Mumbai, managed to wow audiences on both nights. I attended a performance about a man slowly going insane under the dual pressures of work and love, compounded by the fact that the woman he was smitten with was his boss' sole daughter. Eventually, his destination is a padded cell and electro-shock therapy. While this sounds like a recipe for slapstick (of which there was surprisingly little this year), the arc of the story went from amusing to tragic very quickly. The actor, alone on stage, created a convincing window into the life of a lowly clerk at an office, and portrayed his obsessions with such accuracy and attention to detail that the lack of props ceased to be a handicap.
All you had to do was sit back and imagine it. The fact that the play (or naatik) was in Hindi-ised Urdu meant that the audience could imagine it happening to any ordinary man on the street. People falling in love above their station are a staple of the Bollywood catalogue, and have been from the beginning, but the intensity of the actor's performance lent credibility to this much-abused premise. The clerk's life quickly moves from distant admiration to stalking, then to delusions of grandeur via the spirit of Gandhi telling him he is King of Nepal (who went missing during the events shown in the play), thence quickly to mental breakdown. The denouement of the Naatik saw our protagonist lamenting his fate in a sanatorium, very much in the vein of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here, however, there was no merciful death to provide an exit for this character from his troubles.
Similar issues, of inequality and madness, were addressed in the play by the Dickens troupe, Portrait Productions. After reading and acting out certain passages from Nicholas Nickleby, the Pickwick Papers, etc., the actor, again alone on stage, underscored the similarities between hypocritical, repressed Victorian society and its seedy underbelly, and society in Pakistan today. In a dream sequence modeled on the haunting of Scrooge by Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Dickens takes the actor on a trip around the world, pointing out labor slavery in Africa and child labour in Pakistan. The hour-long production ended with a subtle wake-up call to the audience: Dickens' ghost lamenting the fact that, despite his exposure of such practices in his day, nothing much had changed in the intervening 150 years. Dickens' world was, it seemed, closer to home than one had expected.
This then, was the theme of the twenty fifth World Performing Arts Festival, as far as one could see. The concatenation of a tense national security situation, an apathetic public, and Pakistan's exposure to the wider world and its problems led to a unique Festival. Art cannot, it seems, be divorced from reality.
And Rafay Alam, academic and lawyer, highlighted the uniqueness of this year's Festival and Lahore's response to it best: "Rafi Peer's World Performing Arts Festival was a test to see if the city of Lahore would respond. And they did. I myself went to the festival. I try to go every year but this year it was very important to attend because we couldn't let the festival collapse. Even though the festival had no advertising or sponsorship backing it - because of the economic situation - the fact that the Peerzada family went ahead and did the show was remarkable. After the blasts, the festival went ahead and people still showed up. That is your answer to Talibanization."
This is how Talibanization needs to be tackled. And the powers that be and corporations who back out of sponsoring such events should realize that despite all threats and security concerns, the mantra that "the show must go on" is indeed in the best interests of Pakistan.
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INSTEP Magzine
WPA Festival defiantly celebrated the best of music despite bomb threats
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