Friday playersFriday players
Four men sitting in the middle of a green field that has patches of barren land, busy in a discussion, thinking what issue should they base their play on — which they are going to stage in a few minutes. It is a weekly, Friday routine.
In a nearby mosque named after Baitullah Mehsud, the Asr prayers have just been offered and around 200 men, old and young, with numerous children — apparently from religious seminaries, are now leaving the mosque and heading out to an open corner of this space is a heap of garbage while the other is used by children as playground. For the locals, it’s time to enjoy; for they are going to witness the performance of Muhammadzada Dilshad and his fellow actors.
Muzaffarabad Colony is a slum located in a far-off corner of Quaidabad in Karachi. Its population is around 3,000 composed of different ethnicities. However, Pashtuns are in majority here; Muhammadzada, the scrape-vendor and a passionate actor, is one of them.
Born in Karachi some forty years back (he doesn’t remember his date of birth), Muhammadzada’s family hailed from Swat to the ‘city of lights’ in 1966. Since then he’s been living in this very slum, a two-room house, with six children to feed. Poverty has taken a great toll on him.
Three decades ago, Pushto movies had a good market in Karachi. They were released in cinema screens quite regularly and got a good response from the Pushto-speaking filmgoers. Muhammadzada was one of them. He was always fascinated by movies and dreamt of becoming an actor. So he started looking for avenues to explore his talent. All in vain, because he neither had school education nor proper guidance to make his dream come true. Later, he got married and now has six children and one grandchild.
In his teens, he had joined a street-theatre group of local amateur actors, headed by a local celebrity Syed Ali Shah, famously known as Syed Bacha, who used to arrange similar gatherings for his people just for fun in the same vicinity. Syed Bacha also performed in other Pushtoon colonies in Karachi, including Banaras and Sohrab Goth. He later gave up his passion for acting when he was going to Lahore to do a small act in a movie in 1989 upon the insistence of his mother. He promised her that he wouldn’t act anymore. She died later, but he has kept his promise to date.
Muhammadzada was his disciple. He recruited fresh talent and started doing street theatre in the early nineties. He’s kept his passion alive while putting his act before his audiences every week for the past 18 years.
In his journey, he faced many difficulties besides poverty. One of them is resistance from local clerics. In fact, they invoked public sentiments against him and even tried to stop him, for they believed his plays were unethical and too provocative for the young minds of the colony. But Muhammadzada fought the odds, eventually having his way.
Of his Friday theatrical adventures, Muhammadzada says: “I love it. It’s fun and helps people laugh, think and relax. We talk about social issues, such as domestic violence, injustice, family problems, corruption, lack of education and, most of all, the problems our poor people face in their daily life.”
When asked how his acts affect his audiences, he says, “There have been instances when somebody in the audience got carried away and started cursing me. Once I was playing a character who beats his wife. The women in the audience didn’t like it and slapped me. We stopped the proceedings and, later, and tried to make them understand that it’s just acting.” He admits that it was rare of women to attend his plays, because of tribal customs.
But Muhammadzada has no regrets. He says he has enjoyed his life, no matter how difficult it has been so far. “On another occasion, an old man in beard shouted at my fellow actor because the latter threw his father out of his house in a play. It was about how sometimes boys treat their parents who are getting old. It was a panicky situation.”
Muhammahzada runs his own theatre group with four actors, one storywriter, and no aid from anyone. His group members include Ameer Naushad (45), Shahid Zaman (30) and Akber Khan (38).
One of his fellow actors Muhammad Fayyaz Pardesi, a 17-year old innocent-looking boy — is asked to play the female characters, because Muhammadzada cannot recruit women to do the job.
Another member of Muhammadzada’s group, Shahid Zaman, a mason by profession, does the job of visualising. He takes up a social issue and a story around it. His inspiration is Pushto and Urdu movies. His themes are not complexly theatrical and lack a climax a theatre academic or a critic would look for in a play. Muhamamdzada doesn’t have resources for props, costumes or stage, but he manages to get four to five hundred attendants every week.
Published in The News International, January 03rd, 2010.
https://jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2010-weekly/nos-03-01-2010/enc.htm#4