by Imran Iftikhar About three years ago, I received a text from Fizza, my former boss at the school where I used to teach. She was also artistic director of a theater company, Theatre Wallay, of which I am a member now. She told me that her company was starting work on a new play, and was wondering if I […]
TW Blog
20 posts
by Ajmal Hussain Now that the Indian biopic Manto (2018, directed by Nandita Das) has been released in theaters (but banned in Pakistan by Pakistan Censor Board) and is available for streaming, the inevitable comparisons to the Pakistani biopic, also called Manto (2015, directed by Sarmad Sultan Khoosat) have become the topic du jour. Both films are based on the […]
by Rabia Pasha I suppose it’s difficult to say that I joined Theatre Wallay (TW), because back in 2005 we didn’t have a name. We called ourselves amateur theater enthusiasts, and sat around a table as part of a creative writing workshop. The group had a unique affinity, a common bug to refrain from the mundane and a tad bit […]
by Imran Iftikhar I was sitting in a cafe on top of a mountain in china, sipping the most expensive tea in the world. This was the only cafe in the world that made its tea from dragon’s blood. A dragon was slaughtered every time a cup of tea had to be made, after an ornate ritual involving cutting the […]
by Fizza Hasan The number of theatre groups in Pakistan I can count on the fingers of one hand. Two in Karachi, I think, a couple in Lahore, and our group in Islamabad. Over the years there have been a few groups that have popped up and then disappeared when they realized there was no money to be made in […]
by Fizza Hasan The idea of a creative project on the Partition has always been close to my heart. Born into a family of people who migrated in 1947, my father’s family from Panipat, and my mother’s from Meerut, I grew up listening to stories of the Partition. Accounts of the aristocratic life in Panipat, of the house with a […]
by David Studwell Beginning in August of 1947, the largest mass migration in history began as fifteen million men, women, and children left their ancestral homes to cross the newly drawn borders between India and the new country of Pakistan. During and after the partition of India over one million people died as a result of violence that erupted between […]
by Kathleen Mulligan I have always been deeply curious about the stories of my family history and the lives of the people who came before me. That curiosity, combined with a deepening love for the subcontinent, inspired the first seeds of the idea for a Voices of Partition project while David and I were in Islamabad on Fulbright grants in […]
We received several humbling and overwhelming responses from the audience of our latest production Daagh Daagh Ujala. Many Partition survivors who saw the performance appreciated the sensitivity with which the play was put together, and commended Theatre Wallay on taking initiative to tell first-hand accounts of Partition survivors. One such audience member commented that the performance was so moving that […]
by Sarwat Ali This article was published in The News on Sunday after Theatre Wallay staged ‘Godot ke Intizar Mein’ at Alhmara, Lahore in July 2012. It was good to see Theatre Wallay’s ‘Godot ke Intizar Mein’, an Islamabad play being staged in Lahore. It was even better than the next-door ‘Pawnay 14 August’, at Alhamra Hall 1, written by Anwar Maqsood […]