Ajoka Theatre's Burqavaganza - a review

ln our increasingly polarised world, issues once unimportant have become a great source of discord among people, irrespective of religion and/or culture. The issue of hijab, burqa or purdah, for instance, is drawing huge debates from western and as well as eastern societies.

Set against the background of this sensitive issue, Ajoka Theatre recently held the premiere of its play called Burqavaganza at the Alhamra Cultural Complex in Lahore. According to the brochure, the play is an “outrageous musical extravaganza written to challenge the mindsets, provoke the audience to rethink and break the chains of prejudice and outdated values.”

What followed was a series of skits based on national and international news clippings regarding the veil. It presented a hypothetical society where every individual is draped in yards of burqa in true Taliban-style and every few scenes ended with a popular film song. It was an incisive take on the fixation with burqa and the double standards that go with it.

To begin with, a TV channel by the name of Burqa Vision flashed the history of the burqa from the Stone Age, where a prehistoric woman is covered in a veil of leaves, to modern times where she wears the shuttlecock version of the head-to-toe veil. A take on the Star Plus soaps was particularly hilarious as all characters including men wore the hijab and acted with exaggerated histrionics in a play called Kyunke Burqa Bhi Kabhi Hijab Tha. Another skit showed two religious scholars taking live telephone calls from all over Pakistan on issues regarding the veil and answering in convoluted terms, beyond the comprehension of the callers. Politicians were shown exploiting the agenda of the purdah to their advantage, and western societies being unyielding in terms of demanding a ban on the all-enveloping veil.

A cricket match played by veiled players sent the audience in stitches. Other skits made fun of the obsession of our security personnel to go into detailed frisking and body searches of females, an astronaut holding an American flag follows local militia running after a most wanted terrorist Bin Batin symbolising that while our nation is busy with superficial issues that hardly affect us, the western societies have advanced greatly in the fields of science and technology. A love struck couple in hijab is shown courting with the parents of the girl coming to see the prospective groom and end up taking his measurements because he is fully covered. They eventually get married and after several years of marriage are sentenced to stoning to death by a jirga for wearing a revealing hijab. Another skit showed politicians and people of national fame hiding behind burqas symbolising that each had their own hidden agendas to manipulate the masses.

The play was well-researched with a witty viewpoint on an issue that has of late become a focal point of discord. Though one could not agree with all the jibes at the sensitive issue, one definitely agreed that purdah is an individual’s own choice and any compulsion to wear or discard it would foment frustration. An exhibition outside the auditorium displayed various news clippings and photographs regarding the hijab to reinforce to the audience that some of the skits were based on authentic facts.

According to Shahid Nadeem, the writer of Burqavaganza, the objective was not to hurt anyone’s beliefs or feeling. “We wanted to prompt a different thought process … one that can change the system through self-criticism. We should be able to see for ourselves where we are in the world with respect to real issues like survival, justice, freedom, human rights, quality of life and not be fixated with base issues like how much we should or should not be covered,” he said.