2. Introduction
There has always been lack of good drama in Muslims cultures.
Most people would agree that this at least partly because orthodox Islam
views dramatic presenations as suspect.
Therefore theatre did not develop in Pakistan until the coming of television
and Urdu TV dramas in the late sixties.
The theater drama groups have mostly produced Urdu plays and in the
nineteen sixties, plays and didactic full of middle class values, of sexual
prudery nationalism and sentimental sympathy for the oppressed.
As for English plays, they were hardly ever written or performed even in the
universities and colleges after the rise of middle class puritanismin the
seventies.
3. Before Partition
Before partition , Fyzee Rahamin’s drama Daughter of India (1937) is probably
the only item of this genre worth mentioning. The play is romantic.
Likewise Ahmed Ali’s one act play The Land of Twilight (1929) is extravagantly
romantic and lacks dramatic merit.
4. The Naked Night (1965)
In Pakistan, dramatic production remained poor,
Nasir Ahmed Farooqi is among the few who have tried their skillet the art of
writing drama.
His play in three acts,The Naked Night (1965). Was intended to be a drama of
ideas.
Farooqi has the philosophy existential despair as well as the idea existence
being the quest for meaning.
However the paly is a failure. It is so full of pseudo intellectual inanities.
Nasir Farooqi’s love for showing off , which has married his novel, has ruined
the play.
5. Gulzar Ahmed Khan
Gulzar Ahmed Khan
Slaves of time(1986)
Has not been given critical attention.
It is about the partition , it could have been one of the few response to that
traumatic event in literature.
6. Sayeed Ahmed
In the nineteen sixties , an English play called “ The Thing” was produced in
Karachi with considerable success.
It was written by Sayeed Ahmed . Who was much influenced by the works of
absurdist.
It convey the idea that the universe is absurd and life is doomed. Ad in
“Beckett’s Waiting for Godot”
The play was too much for Karachi audience.
7. Hanif Kureshi
Hanif Kureshi , born 5 December 1954 is a playwright. Screenwriter ,
filimmaker, and novelist of south Asian and English descent.
In 2008, The Times included Kureshi in its list of the 50 greatest British Writer since
1945.
There is no significant Pakistani dramatics in English until the advent of Hanif
Kureshi in the nineties eighties.
Kureshi was born in London of an English mother and Pakistani father.
His father came from Bombay and married an English women.
8. The Rainbow Sign,
Hanif was brought up in London and in clearly written essay entitle.
“The Rainbow Sign” he tell us about his life there.
He tells us sentimentally about he emotionally hurting experience of having
grown up in a society where Pakistanis came to be dispersed.
They use derogating term “ Pakis” for Pakistanis.
9. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
His celebrated play My Beautiful Laundrette (1985).
He was angry and disgusted with Britain and thought he would find the kind of
society he was looking for in Pakistan. He came to Karachi for his purpose and
learnt that Pakistani society was hypocritical and unjust.in his titled
“Pakistan” The new regimens emphasis on Islamization has been commented
as follows
Islamization built no hospiatal ,no school , no houses , it cleaned no water
and installed no electricity . But it was direction identity ( page 19)
The play “King And Me 1980 is about the empty urban existence a married
couple.
In the next play ,Out skirts (1981) the husband bills , moves around the flat
ripping down the picture putting all the stuff in a big plastic dustbin bag.
After this iconoclasm, bill invites his wife to begin to face reality.
10. Hanif Novels and Timeline
Novels
1990 The Buddha of Suburbia
1995 The Black Album London
1998 Intimacy , London
2001 Gabriel’s Gift, London
2003 The Body , London
2008 Something to tell you
2014 The Last Word
2017 The Nothing
2019 What Happened?
11. Story and essays collections
Story Collections
1997 Love In The Blue Time
1999 Midnight All Day
2019 She Said He Said
Collection of Stories and Essays
2011 Collected Essays
2015 Love + Hate : Stories and Essays
12. Play and Screenplays
1980 The Kings and Me.
1981 Outskirts, London
1981 Borderline , London 1983 Birds of Passage , London
1988 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, London 1991 London Kills Me , London
1996 My Beautiful Laundrette and other writings , London
1997 My Son And Fanatic , London : 1999 Hanif Kureshi Plays One, London
1999 Sleep with Me , London 2oo2 Collected screenplays Volume 1 , London
2003 The Mother London : 2004 When The Night Begin,2007 Venus
2009 The Black Album (adapted from the novel)
13. Ayad Akhtar
Ayad Akhtar born October 28,1970 is an American playwright, novelist and
screen writer of Pakistani heritage, awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for
Darma.
His work has received two Tony Award nominations for best play ,an award in
Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Edith
Wharton citation for merit in fiction.
Akhtar’s writing covers various themes including the American Muslim
experience, religion and economics , immigration ,and identity.
