Napa to stage Urdu version of Neil Simon’s play

Karachi
The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) is to stage a play, “Aik Diary Jo Kho Gayee”, an Urdu adaption of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs”, with translation by Samina Nazir.
Announcing this at a press conference at Napa on Friday evening, Rahat Kazmi, head of Napa’s theatre department, said that even though it was an adaption of Neil Simon’s play, the content had been readjusted to fit a Pakistani locale and had been recast against the backdrop of the fall of Dhaka in December 1971.
The play, he said, is a narrative of a Bihari family who emigrate to West Pakistan (by now just Pakistan) from the former eastern wing of the country and the situations they face in all facets of life, an assortment of human situations that are a hallmark of children transiting from childhood to adolescence to maturity and the attendant conflicts and convoluted situations.
Kazmi termed the two hours
and 10 minutes’ play “a very good adaptation”.
Cast members Akbar Islam, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Tariq Raja, Ahmer Naqvi, Jia Khan, and Erum Bashir also addressed the press conference and talked about their respective roles.
Bakhtawar Mazhar was all praise for Rahat Kazmi. “It is always a pleasure to be cast in Kazmi’s plays,” she said.
“Everybody sees himself/herself in some aspect or the other of the play, given the plethora of human situations.”
Similarly, cast members Jia Khan, Ahmer Naqvi, and others profusely praised Kazmi’s guidance in the field of theatre.
The play will be staged every Thursday to Sunday from January 15 to February 1 with the press preview on the 14th.
Besides, Akbar Islam announced that Napa would be again staging the Urdu version of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale”, after having staged it in the latter half of last year.
In March 2015, an international theatre festival was planned, he said.