KARACHI, June 9: On Sunday evening the T2F hosted a
session of conversation between Imran Yusuf, the playwright of Stumped,
and Saad Shafqat, novelist and cricket commentator.
Stumped is a play about the cricket team of a fictional country called Kabristan about issues such as match-fixing, masculinity and national pride. It has won the National Academy of Performing Arts’s (Napa) first ever playwriting competition held this year.
Yusuf’s primary motivation to write the play was because it was relevant and he felt that it was the right time to do so. “I wanted to write a classical tragedy and match-fixing was in the air,” said the soft-spoken, casually attired Yusuf.
He also touched upon the fact that Karachi, which was more of an adopted home for him since Yusuf spent his formative years in London, contained toxic vapours of death and hence fed the idea of a tragedy which seeped into his play. “Life is fragile here and death is ever present. Back in suburban London, when someone dies you know who their parents are and the name of that person’s dog. It gets a full page spread in newspapers. And just today [in Karachi] there were two or three paragraphs about five deaths,” said Yusuf.
When Shafqat urged him to talk more about the changes his play underwent from the original idea, Yusuf said, “A lot of the play is different from the initial drafts. The play which was originally written in English and then translated here in Urdu which I think has elevated my work.”
He told the audience that once he came to know about Napa’s playwriting competition, he worked on his play day and night for a month, adding extra scenes to it. What the audience finally saw on the stage was a totally different play. Stumped had originally been titled Kabristan, but director Zain Ahmed wasn’t comfortable with so many fatalities happening in the city, hence, the name was subsequently changed.
Yusuf said that though the play had originally been in English, it was targeted for audience here and did not have a south-west London accent. “The Urdu translation by Fawwad Khan has made the play feel in its right place and language,” he said.
Probing further, Shafqat asked Yusuf how he had been able to get into the heads of cricketers and come up with a scenario of strategy discussion in their hotel rooms, to which Yusuf chuckled and answered, “All those years of watching cricket on TV didn’t go to waste.”
Another point of discussion between Yusuf and Shafqat was the usage of profane language in Stumped. In its showing by Napa on Friday, the play had to be called off halfway through by the organisers after a man whom Yusuf called a thug created a fracas in the auditorium over finding the play ‘offensive’.
“It is not a stuck-up stuffy living room [sort of a play.] People use this language all the time,” said Yusuf, defending his work.
The overall atmosphere of the chat between Shafqat and Yusuf came across as a genial meeting of friends with bouts of humour and a dash of analysis thrown in the mix. However, it left one wishing that more members of the audience had watched the play for making the discussion fruitful and more engaging.
Stumped is a play about the cricket team of a fictional country called Kabristan about issues such as match-fixing, masculinity and national pride. It has won the National Academy of Performing Arts’s (Napa) first ever playwriting competition held this year.
Yusuf’s primary motivation to write the play was because it was relevant and he felt that it was the right time to do so. “I wanted to write a classical tragedy and match-fixing was in the air,” said the soft-spoken, casually attired Yusuf.
He also touched upon the fact that Karachi, which was more of an adopted home for him since Yusuf spent his formative years in London, contained toxic vapours of death and hence fed the idea of a tragedy which seeped into his play. “Life is fragile here and death is ever present. Back in suburban London, when someone dies you know who their parents are and the name of that person’s dog. It gets a full page spread in newspapers. And just today [in Karachi] there were two or three paragraphs about five deaths,” said Yusuf.
When Shafqat urged him to talk more about the changes his play underwent from the original idea, Yusuf said, “A lot of the play is different from the initial drafts. The play which was originally written in English and then translated here in Urdu which I think has elevated my work.”
He told the audience that once he came to know about Napa’s playwriting competition, he worked on his play day and night for a month, adding extra scenes to it. What the audience finally saw on the stage was a totally different play. Stumped had originally been titled Kabristan, but director Zain Ahmed wasn’t comfortable with so many fatalities happening in the city, hence, the name was subsequently changed.
Yusuf said that though the play had originally been in English, it was targeted for audience here and did not have a south-west London accent. “The Urdu translation by Fawwad Khan has made the play feel in its right place and language,” he said.
Probing further, Shafqat asked Yusuf how he had been able to get into the heads of cricketers and come up with a scenario of strategy discussion in their hotel rooms, to which Yusuf chuckled and answered, “All those years of watching cricket on TV didn’t go to waste.”
Another point of discussion between Yusuf and Shafqat was the usage of profane language in Stumped. In its showing by Napa on Friday, the play had to be called off halfway through by the organisers after a man whom Yusuf called a thug created a fracas in the auditorium over finding the play ‘offensive’.
“It is not a stuck-up stuffy living room [sort of a play.] People use this language all the time,” said Yusuf, defending his work.
The overall atmosphere of the chat between Shafqat and Yusuf came across as a genial meeting of friends with bouts of humour and a dash of analysis thrown in the mix. However, it left one wishing that more members of the audience had watched the play for making the discussion fruitful and more engaging.
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