Max Stafford Clark recently said that the verbatim play is the most important development in theatre over the past few decades: suggesting that performance can learn a great deal from newspapers, he points to theatre's speedy response and public engagement as great ways for issues to become part of a broader debate.
It is worth mentioning that the verbatim play has no greater claim to 'truth' than any other play. Although it is based on the words of the participants (in the case of My Name Is..., the family involved in the 'tug-of-love' over a teenage girl), the very fact of its being transformed into a performance undermines its 'essential' truth. The format of theatre, the polishing by writer, actor and directors, the demands of production: all of these shift the meaning away from a faithful reproduction of 'what happened' to a more digestible, suitable for the stage.
This doesn't impact on a show's value, but does demand a particular sensitivity. In the case of My Name Is..., it means remembering that the family on stage are not identical to the family behind the story, and behind the headlines.
That family were the source that launched a thousand tabloid pontifications. When a young Scottish woman left her mother to live with her father in Pakistan, the newspaper managed to simplify this personal drama into different shades of misrepresentation. At first, dad was an Islamic fundamentalist who had nabbed her daughter. Then mum was a nut-job. George Galloway got involved (I am willing to take the complaints about his opportunism by the mother in the play at face value, because Gorgeous George is someone I do not respect anyway).
Sudha Bhuchar spent over five years talking to the family members, and the time and respect spent is evident. Each of the three are given the chance to explain their version, and the conflict between Islam and the West (made into a tedious clash of cultures by the press) takes on a more personal detail. The grand idealism of religious belief - and the idealism of young love - are given respect, but ultimately exposed as unrealistic. All of the characters retain dignity: while the daughter is innocent and naive, the parents attempt to pay respect to each other and their own integrity.
Bhuchar's concern is to see how the personal shaped the political, how the headlines hide a more sophisticated (and irresolvable) tapestry of life and faith. The mother tries to be a good Muslim, the father is more worried about how he appears than his wife's welfare and the pressures of racial abuse (from within and without the Islamic community) erode their efforts to grow together and raise their children.
My Name Is... has no answers, but sketches the territory with economical yet precise strokes. It lives up to Stafford Clark's maxim that verbatim theatre can learn from the newspapers, and present a topic for public debate. It goes beyond this, with a warm, humanistic compassion for the characters, and refusing to forget the intimate detail, even as it draws back to reveal the broader complexities. By giving all of the family members enough of a voice to either hang or save themselves, there is a balance of opinion, leaving plenty of space for discussion.
جاؤ اور اسے دیکھنے کے
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