Written by: Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid
Posted on: September 02, 2019 | 
| 中文
Asif Shah as the Merchant
The last event under Jamal Shah’s watch as the Director-General Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) took place over the weekend, with a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule. It was a requiem to a dynamic Director-General, whose tenure saw the PNCA become a vibrant center of cultural activity in Islamabad.
Bertolt Brecht’s life spanned the most turbulent and formative period of the modern world. Born in Germany in 1898, he experienced the destruction of Europe during the Ist World War, while the rise of Nazism in the 1930s caused him to go into exile. Europe was an intellectual and political hothouse in the inter-war period, where the far right racial and totalitarian ideas of the Nazis and Fascists were being challenged by the left and Marxists. Brecht was converted to Marxism and its vision of a classless society, free of capitalism and its systemic exploitation.
Ravi Umer
Brecht is regarded as the founder of the Epic Theater, which broke from mainstream theater with its appeal to emotions. While the Epic Theater relied on critical thinking about the society, was didactic in its thrust and influenced the spectators towards social and political activism. The Exception and the Rule was written in 1931, and deals with the distortions brought about in human behavior in a class based capitalist society. It was one of several short teaching plays that he wrote in 1929/30 for performance in schools and factories. 29 Productions in collaboration with the German Embassy were responsible for the performance at the PNCA. It was translated into Urdu by Mansoor Saeed and directed by Syed Akash Hussain Bukhari.
The play is about a merchant trying to cross a mythical desert in search of an oil deal from which he expects to reap rich dividends. He has hired a guide and a coolie for the journey. Brecht reduces the contradictions of capitalism to this microcosm of relationships of the three protagonists. The guide belongs to a union so is less vulnerable, but the coolie is at the bottom of the social pile and at the mercy of the merchant. The merchant, a quintessential capitalist, is driven by the capitalist greed to make a killing at the oil field, and is in haste to beat his competitors in reaching his destination.
First he offloads the guide because he sees him fraternizing with the coolie, an unacceptable breaking of class barriers. Without the guide, the merchant and the coolie get lost in the desert, and begin to run low on water. A jumpy and a nervy merchant shoots the coolie thinking that he is about to take his life, when the coolie was only offering him water. Brecht’s visceral attack on capitalism and the relationships it engenders, doesn’t stop here. The merchant is shown as under trial in a courtroom, where the coolie’s widow is looking for some kind of recompense and justice for the murder of her husband. The dice in the system are stacked against the working class, as the merchant is given the benefit of the doubt and goes scot-free, while the hapless widow is left in the capitalist jungle to fend for herself.
A short play of about one hour, the three main characters gave good performances, but the acting of the merchant stood out. The sets were simple, and that kept the focus on the play as the story played out.
The cast of the play
The German Embassy did well to support the staging of a Brecht play, most suitable in the present day circumstances when we see the rise of fascism in our neighboring country, destabilizing the region like Hitler did in Europe of the 30s. The oppression of the underprivileged by the elite also has relevance for the Pakistani society. I just wish the management of the PNCA would restrict the use of flash cameras and the presence of small babies in theatre performances as both were unnecessary distractions to a good play.
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