Let the Games Begin!

14^th September, 2015.

Today as we entered out class room environment it somehow felt different. Why? Well, because of the anticipation of what was to come. In our previous session together, Dr. Hughes and Prof. Branch had informed us that we would start rehearsals for our final performance from today so, every one of us as an individual and as a class were greatly excited at the prospect of the relatively unknown. Like always Dr. Erika Hughes helped us warm up before we could discuss the performance further.

Having worked more on the movements of our mouth and the breathing exercises the instructors set us the task of forming into (preferably) three equal groups: the sounds, the smells, and the visuals. The three groups would then have to work as individual groups as well as a collective group. Once the groups were made we were set the task of having to brainstorm ideas that were relevant to the group we were in. The sounds people had to come up with sounds that we could associate with the three chosen folktales of the subcontinent: Heer Ranjha, Soni Mahiwal and Mirza Sahiban. Similarly, the smells had to come up with distinctly Pakistani smells which can help the audience relate not just with a particular smell but, also relate the smell with their personal experiences.

For instance, the smell of rain could remind the audience of the rain when they had to face heavy downpour for a week but would also help the audience in relating it to their primary (personal) experience. Such as, the rainy day when A (suppose A is the person concerned) was sick.

This is what ethnotheater basically does. As Dr. Hughes and Prof. Branch discussed in the lecture on “Embodied Historiography” today. Ethnotheater is a form of literature where you can mold together the individual experience with the communal experience.

In the morning session we were showed a video from the first ever session Dr. Erika Hughes and Prof. Branch conducted for their Veteran’s Project, and the purpose of this video that I understood was, to help the audience make a connection with not just the individual experience but, also the collective, communal and/or universal experience, especially with regards to The Veteran’s Project. Similarly, the purpose of dividing the class into three groups I thought was to better help the audience in focusing on the three major aspects of theater but also to remind them to focus their effort on the universal as a parallel to the individual. To take all aspects as short units of a larger unit (but to take them as singles and one plural body) as per the analogy of the human body it could mean the individual hands and feet as well as the collective human body.

Since we are focusing on three folktales inspired by the universal theme of love – romantic love rather, let us not forget that love indeed is universal. Every person either yearns to love or be loved, but everyone also yearns for that love with which comes immense pain, the immortal love. Love like that of Romeo and Juliet, Elizabeth and Darcy, Helen and Paris, Adam and Eve, Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahiwal, Laila Majnu, Mirza Sahiban and so on. These are all tales of love gained and love lost. All painful reminders of the universal theme of the desire to love, be loved and the inevitable loss of that so desired love.

The performance is all about this theme. How one yearns for something so badly only to lose it after being attacked by external forces. This raises the question of why? Why yearn for love like these immortalized lovers when you only get hurt? Why isn’t love fickle? Because you cannot lose when you have nothing to lose. Why did these lovers give up there everything for love? Because for them, their everything was their love. This is the essential idea that Lahore in Miniature is going to be about.