Napa international theatre, music festival from March 16

The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) is holding a festival of theatre and music at its premises from March 16 to April 2.

This was announced at a press conference held at Napa on Thursday afternoon.

There will be plays in all regional languages of the country. The theatre groups will be from countries and places as diverse as Nepal, England and Palestine. Besides, there will be a Qawwali on March 21 and the Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa on April 2.

Zain Ahmed, executive producer, Napa, called for a multilingual theatre to cater to the linguistic and cultural diversity of Karachi.

Ustad Nafees Khan said the city of Karachi had such a lot of diversity “as far as musical tastes go”. So, he said, they wanted to celebrate that diversity and cater to all sorts of music, from the most avant-garde to the most traditional.

A play in PashtoOn March 16 and 17 there will be a programme from Germany, Hotel Propaganda, which will include dance sequences.

March 18 will witness a play from Palestine, Return to Palestine, which is sure to be the main attraction of the festival. It is going to be bilingual, Arabic and English. The play is directed by Micaela Miranda.

April 1 will see Ga’on mein Roshni, a play about the emancipation of rural women by Sheema Kermani and Anwar Jafri. On March 16 there will be Insaf Ka Daira by Napa’s third-year students, directed by Meesam Naqvi.

March 19 will see Absolut Manto, a play pertaining to arguably the best Urdu short story writer of South Asia and the best writer of realistic prose. He is known for the bitter truths that he pointed out in society for which he was considered a maverick. The play is directed by Kanwal Khoosat.