“Fikr me Harkat”: Women, Religion and Censorship in Shahid Nadeem’s Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban (1992)
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11409243
Abstract:
Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban was written to wage a war against religious persecution, religious extremism, abuse of blasphemy laws, female objectification, and indifference and passivity. The play’s primary purpose was to shake people out of their slumber and force them to act in the interest of society—Shahid Nadeem experiments with numerous techniques in the play to vitalize his themes. Nadeem makes his characters speak on the same issue to hammer out the idea into the audience’s minds. All the Black Clad men and the White Clad men repeat sentences and topics that seem monotonous and irritating but are only done so that the idea sticks to the audience. The play is a black comedy, but Nadeem makes it macabre by delineating the scene of a market where human organs and limbs are being sold in hawkers’ baskets. This cannibalistic imagery points to growing violence in society and the human tendency to kill each other for their selfish interests. Borrowing from the Brechtian Verfremdungs effect, Nadeem makes artistic use of farcical song and dance in the play to disrupt the smooth flow of the play. The playwright also uses the poems of Iqbal and Bulley Shah and Bollywood songs to downplay the seriousness of the script.
Works cited:
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Khan, Fawzia Afzal. “Street Theatre in Pakistani Punjab: The Case of Ajoka, Lok Rehas and the Woman Question”. TDR (1988), Autumn,1997, Vol 41 No. 3. Pp 39-62.
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