In the context of what we now term “Pakistani” theatre and performance, in addition to gender, aesthetic and racial histories, conventions and traditions, we need also to acknowledge the religious, nationalist, ethnic and linguistic contestations which are key to understanding the history and historiography of Pakistani theatre.
In attempting to theorize Pakistani Theatre and Performance, what you will find in the next several pages are ruminations on the 
entity thus-named to outline a series of questions and concerns which can only, at this juncture, begin to enunciate steps toward the elaboration of a proper poetics or theory of Pakistani theatre.
The very first issue requiring acknowledgment, even though its naming raises more questions and complexities than it clarifies, is the (debatable) fact: it is a species of the genus Islamic Theatre, which then raises several additional questions: what is Islamic theatre? Assuming that such a tradition exists, what aspects of its history are pertinent in the Pakistani context and in what specific forms do they exist today? These questions inevitably entail the problematic of aesthetic criteria of performance and its origins, and so, in a sense, what is really at stake is the location and evaluation of Pakistani (read: Islamic) theatrical praxis within the context of World Theatre.
I want to begin by citing a number of quotations from theater theorists and human rights activists from within and without Pakistan as a means of calling attention to the complex web of questions/issues that are germane to the task of developing a theoretical framework for understanding and evaluating and possibly even developing a manifesto for theatrical praxis in Pakistan. This web of questions in turn addresses one of the sub-themes of this conference: “Drama Under Scrutiny”—in this case, all of the issues of what can or can’t be said about “Muslim Theatre” in general, and Pakistani theatre in particular. There are issues of “expertise” involved and who has it, which have shaped the dominant narrative of an Islamic Theatre in the centers of Western learning, and on the other hand, the self-censoring state narrative of an Islamic ideology which has constrained what can be said or thought or performed within the context of the Pakistani state ideology.
John Bell, theatre scholar, writes in the pages of TDR, that “Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, in the midst of a “War on Terror,” Middle East, Arabic, and Islamic cultures are subjects of a relentless American gaze that looks intently but superficially at certain aspects of those cultures, for the most part ignoring depth, context and history; and disliking, or at least not understanding what it sees.”
For Bell, this ignorance of indigenous theatrical traditions and histories—a form of censorship by default if not design– has the unfortunate consequence of belittling these rich and diverse cultures all lumped into the pejorative label “Islamic,” according to a specious ideology believing that the origin of all innovative knowledge including within the dramatic arts, has its roots within the west. Such an ideological belief underwrites the thinking even of those indigenous or “native” scholars like Raif Karam of Lebanon, who wish to counter western stereotypes of their cultural heritage and work. In his, and the work of such renowned Arabic scholars like Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Islamic and Arabic performance is seen, ironically in the same light as it is in the work of western orientalist scholars like Oscar Brockett and Franklin Tildy, as a “tradition of absence,” in which the Western origin of “modern theatre” when “introduced” to the Islamic cultures is seen as a sign of their “crippling social failure” (Bell 5).
An oft-cited reason for the lack of theatrical traditions in Islamic lands has been the assumed hostility of the religion to representational art. According to Brockett and Tildy, noted “experts” on world theatre, “In the history of the theatre…Islam is a largely negative force. It forbade artists to make images of living things because Allah was said to be the only creator of life and to compete with him was considered a mortal mortal sin. Thus, Islamic art remained primarily decorative rather than representational.The prohibitions extended to theatre and consequently in those areas where Islam became dominant advanced theatrical forms were stifled.” (qtd in Bell 6)
Quite rightly, (though I am not entirely in agreement with him here)-Bell remarks upon how stunning—and damaging to unbiased appraisal of Islamic contributions to theatre—in both scope and ignorance such a sweeping denunciation is, a result of the faulty scholarship of two scholars regarded as “the deans of American theatre history.”
Ultimately, for my purposes, the most important observation to be made here is that such claims lay the groundwork for an analytic or theoretical model dependent on particular, if subtle, aesthetic evaluations of theatrical form (Bell 6). What such a heuristic model either leaves out or denigrates (censors!), is precisely what needs attending to in any theory of performance rooted in Islamic history and Islamic cultural practices (however “mixed” with other non-Islamic traditions these may be and are, as in the case of Pakistan).
In Masks, Mimes and Miracles, Allardyce Nicoll informs us that, “Among the entertainments condemned by the Fathers of the Church the neoropasta [art of puppets] often figured…in 1317, the Council of Terragona condemns the bastaxi [play of puppets]…”
After the collapse of the Roman empire with its strong theatrical traditions, and with the subsequent rise of Christianity in the early centuries AD, all sorts of entertainments were suppressed by the Church Fathers. Indeed, in the earliest extant drawing of puppets in Europe (The Hortus Deliciarum or Garden of Delights by Harrad Von Landsberg, dated AD 1170), King Solomon is shown as a Christ-like figure pronouncing judgment on a puppet-show as a demonstration of a pastime that is unworthy of a true Christian (The Historical Development of Puppetry) Thus, the hostility to any form of representational art or artistic pastime ( in this case, a form of theatre)—here emanates from within Chrishastian iconography and religious dicta. More interestingly, the date of this document, 1170, Is during the time that ordinary folk from all over Europe traveled East to Islamic countries to drive out the infidel from the Holy Lands. They traveled to Egypt, Turkey and Arabia and some returned home bringing along new ideas and customs from the exotic East.
While there are no documents showing when and where Oriental puppets came to Europe, the example of the history of the game of chess may be the method and path of transference according to the author of The Historical Development of Puppetry. Arabian chess pieces found in Central Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries may well have been brought by the Vikings from the Far East. Indeed, in the Alfonso Manuscript is a miniature where “three Indian seers bring a chess game and a dice game to the Persian king who is portrayed here as a Christian king.” And it is around this time in Persia that we begin to hear of “theatre,” through the Rubaiyat of famous Persian poet Omar Khayyam (105-1153):
We are no other than a moving row
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with Sun-illumined lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
Two important thoughts come to mind here: one, Islam was hardly the inhospitable snuffer-out of theatrical innovation as theatre historians quoted earlier have made it out to be, certainly not in the Middle Ages when it was Christianity that seems to have had trouble with performative traditions as they were beginning to be disseminated in Europe via a puppet-theatre originating in the Islamic east. Second, that Islamic puppetry, with its roots in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, allowed for and even encouraged, a form of social and political critique and commentary that became popular in Renaissance Europe through the Punch and Judy show, and which in its earliest Turkish incarnation during the 16th century, was known as the “Karakoz” or “Shadow Theater.”
James Smith informs us that Karakoz became a popular art form in Turkey from the late 16th century on, coinciding with the rise of popularity of coffee shops, where the plays were esp. popular during the holy month of Ramadan. According to Smith, Islamic officials condemned both the coffee shops and the plays—but, the poorer classes filled the shops after sundown during Ramadan, to enjoy a post-fast feast and a karakoz show at the same time—with a different show being performed every night of Ramadan. Ironically, then, Karakoz became associated with festival—“with the carnivalistic side of Islam’s most solemn holy month, and as such, karakoz shows became mixed with both religious elements and carnival elements.” Furthermore, Islamic Sufi thought, one of the most powerful cultural forces within Islamic society from the 12th century onwards, also affected karakoz performance. According to karagiozis expert Linda Myrsiades, “Turkish shadow puppetry was designed both to entertain and to achieve religious experience, based on the Sufi Islamic doctrine that man is but a shadow manipulated by his Creator” (Myrsiades 1988, 2)
Islamic officials displeasure at these forms of spectacle may have been couched in Islamic rhetoric against the dangers of representational art (even in puppet form)—but it is fairly obvious that what they feared was people power that could be harnessed as a revolutionary protest form via exposure to social critique through a folk performance tradition, occuring in a carnivalesque setting of food and coffee-shop intimacy. Yet, even though the disenfranchised masses found an expression of power through the themes and plots of karakoz puppet plays, the authorities and religious institutions found ways to excuse—and even bless—these performances. Why? Because at the end of most of these plays, the mock king (the fool, the man of the masses)—became dethroned after enjoying power only briefly; Karakoz, the Man of the People, is always returned to his “normal” place in society. Social and cultural norms reinstitute themselves. Thus, the message is that while the lower classes could have the power to define themselves, it could only be for a short time, and then it had to be given back. In Smith’s words, “the carnival world portrayed behind the white curtain of the shadow puppet theatre was only a fleeting, temporary illusion.”
What should become clear at this point are a number of factors: that in the development of theatre worldwide, Islam contributed a lot more than is commonly understood, and also that as with any other religious world-view upholding concepts of the “natural order” of things such as the divine right of kings or of the higher classes to rule over the lower classes, and its corollary, of men over women—theatre understood as the performance of a certain kind of exercise of power would necessarily become a site of potential conflict and hence of control.
These general observations and notes bring me to the subject of Pakistan, and of the place of theatre in Pakistan. To help situate a tradition that is rooted in the history of prePartition India, and is most immediately and most recently traceable to the beginnings of Urdu theatre in India (Urdu being the language associated with the Muslims of India) as well as with the Parsi Theatre tradition (which like the Urdu theatre, speaks to the polyglot, mulitreligious and multicultural influences of what we now think of as the Theatre, such as it is, of Islamic Pakistan)—I want to call attention to a couple of statements by prominent cultural and human rights activists of Pakistan today.
Beena Sarwar, a noted journalist, reports on the atmosphere of cultural and political despair and chaos existing during the Nawaz Sharif regime which was in power in Pakistan just prior to the take-over by Martial Law dictator Pervez Musharraf. In 1998, a few years prior to 9/11, it was clear to Pakistani citizens that the country was on a path to self-destruction, with the democratically-elected regime of Nawaz Sharif unable to stem the tide of religious fundamentalism. Indeed, he urged the senators to pass the horrific 15th amendment or Shariat bill, curtailing the rights of women and religious minorities, despite nation-wide protests. Very astutely, Mehboob Khan, a lawyer, linked culture and politics in his response to the proposed bill: “In this situation, women and religious minorities are particularly threatened, as is cultural and artistic expression.”
What is interesting to note for the purposes of my project, is that many Pakistani citizens tried to counter the atmosphere of repression and fear that had started to build in Pakistan since the late 1970s, and which exists to this very day with the “Mullah” threat very much present despite the current President’s policy of “Enlightened Moderation”—by clutching at the straw of cultural expression. The rock band Junoon, which had made statements critical of Pakistani state repression in enemy territory—India—became more popular than ever before. The privately-organized annual Music Conference in Lahore began drawing larger crowds, and, Sarwar informs us that “Record numbers of people and performers attended the Fourth International Puppet Festival, which hosted as many as 38 troupes From 27 foreign countries, including India, between Oct 17-27…”
These festivals, organized by the Rafi Peer Theatre Group of Lahore, have taken place each time against great odds, mostly on private funding, since government support for the performing arts has always been almost negligible.
I.A, Rahman, the director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan since the 1990s, observes, “Culture is the antithesis of anarchy.” While hanging on to culture in various forms seems to promise some order to (some of) the people of Pakistan, Rahman’s prognosis is dire: Culture has little chance to flourish in a society that has chosen the path of chaos and fratricide. ..those wielding the axe against artist will not only harm cultural flowering in Pakistan, but will also aggravate society’s state of debility. (Interpress Third World Agency, 1998, p. 3)
I have chosen to begin my theoretical ruminations on Pakistani theatre by quoting Rahman and Sarwar in order to highlight the importance of cultural work in contemporary Pakistan as a bulwark against the forces of religious obscurantism and the ensuing chaos or breakdown of civil society—against, in other words, censorship from within. Theatre work, in this sense, must be understood broadly within the parameters of performance in general, and the notion of performance has to be opened up to encompass not only formal genres associated with a commonplace understanding of “performance,” but in a more fluid sense of the term as developed by a Performance Studies perspective (associated most closely in the western academy with the work of Richard Schechner). Indeed, what we need to attend to is our tendency to conflate “drama” and “theatre” (Bell, 7). While text-based “drama” certainly exists in the Pakistani context, traceable to the Urdu-language dramas first developed by the Indian Muslim dramatist Agha Hashr Kashmiri in the early 1900s, and even earlier to the marvelous “total theatre” productions developed in the Awadh court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the energy and excitement of contemporary Pakistani theatre comes from the folk traditions of Sufi music and poetry, puppetry, and other folk forms of dance and song such as the “swangi” traditions of the Potohar plateau, all of which are being revived through annual festivals organized by big theatre companies like the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (the only one of its kind in Pakistan it must be noted) as well as in the work of what used to be “street theatre” groups all over Pakistan and which now survive as fairly stable theatre companies such as Ajoka in Punjab, Tehrik-i-Niswan (Movement for Womens Rights)in Karachi (Sindh), or as Theatre of the Oppressed groups being formed all over Pakistan since the last five years under the leadership of an NGO called the Interactive Resource Center of Lahore. Ribald folk humor and dance often dismissed as :vulgar” and “obscene” both by the state and religious authorities as well as by the “cultural elite” which paradoxically now includes people associated with original street theatre groups such as Ajoka–is performed as proscenium productions which play to packed audiences in the “commercial” theatre auditoriums of Lahore.(Many of these theatre venues have been the sites of small bomb detonations as recently as January 2009).
Like Meyerhold, Artaud, Grotowski, Boal, and other major “modern” theorists and practitioners of Theatre in the West, theatre activists and other cultural workers as well as theorists and academics of Pakistani culture including myself, are concerned with issues of local aesthetics vs international (read western) standards, of marketplace pressures, of complicities between the state apparatus and the forces of religious extremism, of the complex and delicate negotiations necessary between competing demands and definitions of identity which are constantly threatened by internal and external divisions of ethnicity, class, gender, religion, sect, language and nation. The very term “censorship”, under such competing demands and sets of allegiances becomes a highly porous one, and its terrain a difficult one to negotiate by a theatre scholar who is aware both of western ideological traps, as well as native Islamist ones, in which what can or should be enunciated in one location is not necessarily transferrable to a different location—or, at the very least, requires a delicate balancing act and careful scrutiny of the performative codes of speech and behavior, within which complex positionalities must be etched out and contextualized, always.
Elin Diamond, in her introduction to Performance and Cultural Politics (ed Elin Diamond, London: Routledge, 1996; rpt.in The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance ed. Lizbeth Goodman and Jane de Gay, London: Routledge, 2000, 66-74) reminds us that performance is always “a doing and a thing done ,” always drifting between past and present. That is to say, every performance understood as such, “embeds features of previous performances, gender conventions, racial histories, aesthetic traditions—political and cultural pressures that are consciously and unconsciously acknowledged….it is impossible to write the pleasurable embodiments we call performance without tangling with the cultural stories, traditions and political contestations that comprise our sense of history”.
In the context of what we now term “Pakistani” theatre and performance, in addition to gender, aesthetic and racial histories, conventions and traditions, we need also to acknowledge the religious, nationalist, ethnic and linguistic contestations which are key to understanding the history and historiography of Pakistani theatre which has become synonymous with “Muslim” and to a lesser or perhaps more contested degree, “Urdu” theatre across what used to be known as the Indian subcontinent (now the nation-states of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh).
Indeed, as Kathryn Hansen, an Indian theatre scholar specializing in the history of the Parsi Theatre tells us, the knowledge circulated thus far about the Parsi theatre exists in scholarly writing in the Indian languages of Urdu, Hindi and Gujarati, which have perpetuated a highly communalized [divisive] understanding of this highly significant theatrical form (Hansen 61). Urdu is widely regarded as the language of the Muslims and hence now associated with Pakistan, Hindi as the language of the dominant majority who are Hindus, and Gujarati as the language spoken by the majority of Indian Parsis or Zoroastrians who are a tiny minority in India hailing originally from Persia. The extant scholarly literature, depending on who has written it and in which language, perpetuates certain omissions and distortions which create this communalized notion of theatre separated by religion and ethnicity, and now, by nation. What gets “censored” is a more holistic view of these traditions rooted in a more unified intra-ethnic, intra-religious sensibility. Nevertheless, Hansen recognizes that scholarship in these languages cannot be dismissed simply because of its communalist biases since it provides us with invaluable sources of knowledge and documentation about theatre practices within Parsi theatre in its heyday from late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. What is important, however, according to Hansen—and here her point of view coincides with Diamond’s—is that the theatre investigator “needs to proceed with open eyes, reading across the linguistic divide and resisting the habit of constructing the past in the image of the present” . A worthy note of caution against the impulse to self-censor in the face of Ideological State Apparatuses which are operative no matter what our location.
(From Viewpoint Online)
© 2011, Fawzia Afzal-Khan. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.
