June issue 2016
Tribute to a Maestro: Shakeel's Solo
Artspeak: The Art of Love
[caption id="attachment_18390" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Shakir Ali[/caption] Circulating on social media is a copy of the…
Book Review: Water in the Wilderness
Rarely is the process of writing a book as interesting as the book itself. But the…
Speaker's Corner: Fighting for the Dream
When we won our liberation war on December 16, 1971, there was the euphoric feeling…
Cover Story: The Punjab's Robber Barons
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has awarded mega development projects worth dozens of billions of…
The Boomerang effect: How is ehtesab faring in KPK?
The people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are great believers in holding their rulers accountable, particularly if…
Dastangoi: Revival of an ancient art form.
Graduates of the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA), and students of the revered…
Cover Story: Corrupt to the Core
When it comes to corruption in Sindh, the sky is the limit. Not only is…
Profile: Mushtaq Chhapra
The Game Changer A successful industrialist, Mushtaq Chhapra also epitomises the spirit of social welfare.…
Art Review: The Essential Weave
Some apparently simple objects encapsulate millennia of human history. The mats and baskets woven from…
Book Review: Biography Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Every verse that Faiz composed has its own biography. You may be able to decipher…
WOW Festival Karachi
On May 1 this year, Karachi had the distinction of being the first South Asian…
Economy: Guns or Butter?
Pakistan has once again missed its economic growth target for the outgoing financial year by…
Nest of Vipers: Accountability in Balochistan
After a long period of inaction, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Balochistan finally sprung…
Al Qaeda: Generation Next?
The startling rise of the Islamic State (IS) in regions of Iraq and Syria (Syraq) over…
This Land is Our Land: Peasants in Okara fight for their rights.
[caption id="attachment_18374" align="alignleft" width="300"] AMP General Secretary Mehr Abdul Sattar.[/caption] Over a century ago, the…
Art in Chains: Art classes in Karachi prisons
It is a reasonably spacious room, peppered with paintings resting on wooden easels. Men hold…
Just a month after Fashion Pakistan Week (FPW), the stage was set for Bridal Couture…
Movie Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity
Matthew Brown's The Man Who Knew Infinity cannot expect viewers to be fascinated by the…
Movie Review: Money Monster
The message of Jodie Foster's gripping thriller about systemic corruption, ravenous greed and moral bankruptcy…
Born Again? Is the MMA re-convening?
On February 24, the Punjab Assembly passed the Protection of Women Against Violence Act, 2016.…
Close Encounters with Mullah Mansour
I had no idea that the man I shook hands with and embraced at Mullah…
Movie Review: Azhar
Everything you need to know about Azhar, the Emraan Hashmi-starring film about India's disgraced cricket…
Wheeler Dealer: Careem comes to town.
Pakistan's public transport system, or lack thereof, is a sector that has long needed…
Battleground Bangladesh: Extremists attack bloggers
On May 20, 55-year-old homeopath Mir Sanaur Rahman was travelling to a village on his…
With a long and distinguished career behind him and still an active and integral part…
Cricket: Bumpy Ride Ahead
A series of photographs showing elite Pakistani cricketers struggling to go through physical drills under…
Dialogue or Death? What does the death of the Taliban chief mean?
It's late in the night. A group of men, around 20 in total, sporting black-and-white…
American elections: Right Turn for the West?
This is how fascism comes to America," a commentator recently wrote in The Washington…
End of Empire? The Panama scandal won't go away so easily.
Agreed that way back in 1983 our longtime prime minister-in-waiting, Imran Khan, formed…
Cover Story: Robber Raj
The floodgates were opened by the Panama Papers leaks and Chief of Army Staff Raheel…
Art Review: Cosmic Configurations
It was refreshing to visit Koel Gallery's show of sculptural works by Fahim Rao. Nine…
Movie Review: Mah-e-Mir
Pakistani cinema has managed to draw an audience diverse enough to allow film-makers and writers…
Editor's Note: June 2016
Ours is a country without parallel. The Amir of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour,…
By Zahra Chughtai | Theatre | Published 4 years ago
With a long and distinguished career behind him and still an active and integral part of the acting fraternity, Shakeel has played some of the most popular characters to grace the local television screen. Shakeel is also known to be one of the most humane and humble actors around, hailing from a time when actors were artists and professionals before they became stars. Certainly, he still has no starry airs about him and doesn't hesitate to answer his own phone in this age of agents screening calls for one-hit serial old actors.
A solo, one-day performance by the actor, followed by the screening of a short film spanning Shakeel's body of work, was recently organised at the Arts Council in Karachi as a well deserved tribute to the actor. With his first appearance on the small screen in the early '70s, Shakeel's intense blue-eyed gaze and smooth dialogue delivery made him an instant heartthrob. But at the very height of his romantic appeal, he switched gears to play the bespectacled, bearded Uncle Urfi, receding hairline and all. The gamble paid off and that remains one of his most memorable characters to date.
The solo performance titled Uss Gali Na Jawin, penned by Sarmad Sehbai, presented Shakeel the actor, pure and unplugged. With a minimalist set comprising several scratched and scribbled-upon screens and aided only by the effective use of lighting and sound, the actor held sway. Shakeel played an old tramp who wandered onto the stage feeding pigeons, which he addressed like his children. He cajoled them, chatted with them, chided them. But one pigeon was missing. He had not returned home from his travels and the old man became increasingly agitated. As his anxiety increased, it seemed that the missing pigeon was perhaps a son who had left the old man or whom he had lost.
The play, which opened in a light-hearted mood, with the old man enjoying the bright weather, became more somber as it unfolded. Slowly, dread and a nameless fear crept in, and also a sense of having lost something very precious, perhaps a time that will never return. The play had no concrete story line; it was more of a stream of consciousness monologue, touching on the old man's loneliness and isolation as well as various societal ills and conflicts we struggle with. There was, for example, the definite theme of going away, of abandonment. The old man spoke of airplanes, security checks and leaving for foreign shores, seeming to touch upon the post 9-11 age of enhanced security and the constant mistrust in which we now live.
Given the very abstract script he had to work with, Shakeel gave a restrained and sensitive performance to evoke interest and pathos for a character that could have been overplayed by a less seasoned artist.
In a short span of time, the actor included us in the old man's internal world where his own thoughts were his only and most constant companions. The dramatic use of light and sound added to the mood to convey terror, catastrophe and finally resignation.
The evening brought home two points: first the joy of watching a live performance, and second, the skill of our veteran actors. One wishes Shakeel and other actors of his ilk would grace the stage more often.
Zahra Chughtai has worked and written for Pakistan's leading publications including Newsline, the Herald and Dawn. She continues to write freelance.