Theatre Festival at the Alhamra Arts Council from Feb 23 to 28

The Ajoka Theatre will inspire its audience with its popular plays under the ‘Spring Theatre Festival’ scheduled to be held at the Alhamra Arts Council from Feb 23 to 28. Shahid Nadeem, a noted playwright who is the artistic director of the Ajoka theatre, told Dawn that the ‘prevailing conditions’ did not allow Ajoka to hold Panj Pani festival this year. Ajoka is celebrating its 25 years this year and a festival has been arranged, which will showcase
popular and landmark plays. These performances include Bullah, Toba Tek Singh, Bala King, Hotel Moenjodaro and Chalk Chakkar.

He said the festival would be the opening chapter of the yearlong activities of Ajoka’s silverjubilee celebrations. In March another festival of popular plays by Ajoka will be held in Islamabad at the National Art Gallery in which eight plays will be staged. There will be a festival at the Karachi Arts Council in April.

To hold an exhibition of paintings is a matter of great responsibility right from packing of the artworks to putting them on display. Every artist feels anxious while sending one’s artworks to some art gallery especially when the exhibition is out of town, for one is concerned about the safety of one’s artworks — be it paintings, sculpture, ceramics or other forms of art. Of late, something unusual happened with the paintings of none other than a high-profile painter of the country, the late Hanif Ramay.

A collection of his 330 works was sent to the National Gallery Islamabad to be put on display.

The reason for choosing the National Art Gallery was that no other gallery had the kind of space which could accommodate such a big collection.

A PNCA official, requesting anonymity, told this correspondent that paintings were safely sent from Lahore to the PNCA Islamabad in a capacious vehicle. The exhibition went well and was highly appreciated by the art lovers.

After the exhibition, the shipment of paintings, 185 in number (the total number of paintings has yet to be returned), to Lahore was handled carelessly and paintings were stuffed in a small van from Islamabad. It may be mentioned here that the visual art department of PNCA looks after the fine arts activity in Islamabad. The outcome was that some seven to eight paintings got damaged. There were gashes in those paintings.

The official said Ibrahim Ramay had registered a complaint with the PNCA authorities and its director general had initiated an inquiry in this regard. It is learnt that Mr Ibrahim was satisfied the way the works were exhibited and he had no complaints except the fact that he had utter regrets about the way the paintings were transported to Lahore.

The All-Pakistan Music Conference will hold a musical evening with singer Sara Zaman and Shahbaz Qadri at the Alhamra Arts Council. Sitar will also be played during the evening by Farrukh Bashir who is also the Pakistan Television Center, Lahore, general manager.

Tabla would be played by Abdul Sattar Tari, Sarangi by Zohaib and Muhammad Aslam will play harmonium. Musical evenings by the conference for the last 50 years have become part and parcel of Lahore’s cultural scene.

Its been over a month that parking inside the Lahore Arts Council has been banned for the public. The new executive director of Lahore Arts Council, Kamran Afzal Cheema had said over a week before that parking facility would be open to public in some days. He said lists were being prepared for the regular visitors and stickers would also be issued, however, nothing has been done so far.

Mr Cheema told this correspondent on Saturday that the process would take some more days. An Alhmara Art Center employee said a list of only 12 people had been prepared, who would be given parking facility inside Alhamra. These names include some high-ranking officials from different departments. A large number of Alhamra visitors, including teachers of art classes, members of Adabi Baithak, theatre lovers, and art exhibition visitors, have expressed concern over the situation.

Despite repeated requests by them the parking facility inside the council’s office is still a farreaching thing for them.