Grooming talent for a decade: Napa turns 10 on February 5

Karachi
The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) will celebrate the first decade of its inception on February 5.
While many of us may have differing opinions about Napa’s contribution or success, everyone would have to concur that it has made a barren landscape of entertainment that Karachi once was look like an oasis.
The large number of plays and music festivals sponsored by the academy has been commendable, as is the large number of young folk whose potential for musical or theatrical talent it has brought to the fore.
In particular, the plays that it staged were of a high intellectual value, like Samuel Beckett’s existentialist play ‘Waiting for Godot’ or William Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ – plays that are profound and poignant in their themes.
“I think we’ve done very well,” Napa Executive Director Arshad Mehmood told The News while evaluating the decade in a nutshell.
“The interest among young people in music and theatre is progressively increasing, and we are all gainfully employed.”
Mehmood said many Napa graduates were getting lucrative contracts for theatre and plays elsewhere, and the case was the same as regards music graduates.
Regarding society’s attitude towards music or the performing arts, he said the conservative segment of society – who happens to be a majority – was generally not favourably inclined in the past, adding that very few looked upon the idea of pursuing them as a profession with favour.
“However, we have done quite a bit to dispel many myths that prevailed about the two pursuits. Karachi being a city with a softer attitude towards the arts, we encouraged young people to go in for this, and word was disseminated in other places.”
Mehmood said that when young people began enrolling, they found that all the talk about such institutes promoting moral laxity and violation of values was a myth and that the students went through a very strict and morally upright regime.
“This went a long way in softening attitudes until, in some cases, we even had parents bringing their wards for admission and interviews. When they saw the atmosphere in the institute, they were satisfied that it did not pose the danger of their children going astray.”
At this juncture, he called for one of the female students, who is from a very conservative locality in the vicinity of Muzaffargarh.
She told The News that since her father had died, she was at a loss as to what to do, so someone suggested joining Napa to train for a career in theatre. She said that at first her mother was not at all receptive to the idea, and the brother was plain hostile.
“However, after seeing the place for themselves a number of times, my mother got reconciled to the idea and even my brother’s stance has softened.”
Mehmood said: “We convinced them that the place was not a house of vice.” He said Napa’s fee structure and special schemes for talented young people were meant to cater to the lower middle classes.
“The academy has not only provided gainful employment to us, the staff, but even the graduates, and many who in the beginning commuted to the academy and back by bus now drive their own cars.”
The whole exercise has been an attempt to bring rationality to the patriarchal structure of society, he added.