Written by: Farheen Abdullah
Posted on: November 27 2018 | 
| 中文
The performance began with the two actors mirroring each other's movements
Theatre is an art form which is increasingly gaining popularity in Pakistan, and multiple groups are working towards putting together new and creative acts. A similar attempt has recently been made by the Fringe Karachi Repertory, to produce unique performances and engage larger audiences. A collective of theatre graduates and practitioners, Fringe Karachi Repertory’s objective is to step away from conventional theatre practices, and explore new narrative treatments. The first spell of their series was held at The Second Floor (T2F), Karachi, on 23rd and 24th November, 2018.
Directed by Zohair Raza and performed by Sehrish and Adnan Jaffar, the play took a theatrical approach to delivering Jaun Elia’s work. One of the most prominent modern Pakistani poets, popular for his unconventional poetry, Jaun Elia was born on 14th December, 1931, in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, India. While his father was an astrologer and a poet, Jaun was the youngest of his siblings, and his brothers were journalists and psychoanalysts. Elia grew up to become a Marxist Urdu poet, philosopher, biographer and scholar. Deeply inspired by his father, Jaun Elia was a lot more than what the masses have labeled him: a depressed comedic writer, who created wordplay addressed to his ex-lover.
The show hosted by T2F took an unorthodox approach towards reciting pieces from Farnood, a collection of Elia’s essays and prose, along with some of his poetry. Starring only two performers, with one acting out Elia’s poetry (Sehrish) and another enacting his prose (Adnan), the play was created around a simple setting of two chairs and a table. The act opened with Sehrish and Adnan dressed in similar black attire, and mirroring each other’s movements while being seated on the chairs. While the synchronized movements were captivating and immediately had the audience’s attention, perhaps they could have been cut a little short to keep the audience hooked on for longer.
Sehrish and Adnan took turns while performing their respective pieces, and to say that the two of them perfectly delivered would not be an overstatement. Not only did they manage to memorize long monologues, but they also delivered them with great emotion and conviction. To make the performance more personal and interactive, they looked into the eyes of their viewers and spoke directly to them. However, the vocabulary of Elia’s writings was more difficult than colloquial Urdu, and the difficult language left the audience, especially the youngsters, a little confused and lost on multiple occasions. At one point, Sehrish whispered something into the ears of two spectators, leaving the rest of the audience even more puzzled.
The biggest shortcoming for the team of Fringe came in the form of the venue. Though a brilliant place for intellectual discourse and other artistic expression, The Second Floor, due to its compact structure, does not serve as the best setting for theatrical performances. While the small room requires no voice throw, an essential part of theatre, the two pillars situated in the middle of the room block the audience’s view of the performances. Due to the restricted space, the viewers had to be seated in a horse-shoe setting, but this did not work out smoothly either. For instance, when the act opened on Saturday night and began with a video being played on a projector, half the audience had their backs to the wall with the visual on it. Moreover, Sehrish and Adnan ended up having their backs to the audience too, on occasions when they chose to move around the room.
Another element that seemed to be missing from the whole situation was that of creative manipulation. While the play wrapped up after a performance of forty minutes, it left the spectators wondering if the concept was too simple for its own good. The team had claimed that they were not performing a recital, but they seemed to have skipped out on some theatrical elements as well. However, this was only the first performance of the series. and the team will surely learn from their experiences and return with a more refined act.
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