Performative Practices and Poetry in North America and Pakistan

FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN'S A CRITICAL STAGE: THE ROLE OF SECULAR ALTERNATIVE THEATRE IN PAKISTAN, CALCUTTA, INDIA: SEAGULL BOOKS, 2005 CAUGHT IN THE ACT: AH ANTHOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE ART BY CANADIAN WOMEN, EDITED BY TANYA MARS AND JOHANNA HOUSEHOLDER, TORONTO, ONTARIO: YYZ BOOKS, 2004 SOLID GROUND: A POETRY ANTHOLOGY BY WRITERS CORPS, EDITED BY JUDITH TANNENBAUM, SAN FRANCISCO, CA: AUNT LUTE BOOKS, 2006 These three texts are explorations of radical art forms in Pakistan, Canada, and the United States, respectively. A Critical Stage presents an analysis of theater in Pakistan, a theatrical form that confronts social oppression. Caught in the Act is a survey of women performance artists in Canada, many of whom are thirty-plus-year veterans of this discipline. Solid Ground is an anthology of poetic works by teens and young adults in San Francisco who have participated in Writers Corps programs. Together, these texts reveal ways that embodied and literary art forms are vital and transformational. The work discussed in all of these books points to the ways that poetry and performance has the potential to disempower local and global systems of dominance. Secular alternative a.k.a. parallel theater, in Pakistan was formed as a reaction to General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq's militaristic regime (1977-89). secular theater is most often performed at sites where the poor and working gather: in factory courtyards, in community rooms, and at schools. Theatrical productions address issues that pertain to the environment, water shortage, hierarchies, lack of educational facilities, discriminatory treatment toward women, sexual and domestic violence, and honor killing. In addition to performing plays, theater groups teach workshops in the communities where they perform. The role-playing exercises they facilitate enable women and children to articulate oppressions that may have never been spoken about. Those who participate in theater groups view themselves as cultural activists first and artists second. For them, theater is a tool to convey political messages, a catalyst for liberation and social development. As discussed in her book, A Critical Stage, Afzal-Khan is a singer and actor in several secular alternative theater groups. In addition to her own experience of being a participant in she has a unique perspective about the audience. When she attends a play put on by Lok Rehas or Ajoka (two of the first secular alternative theater groups), she does not sit in the dark and watch the actors on the stage in the role of director, stage designer, or critic. Instead she surveys those who come to see the production. She pays close attention to the audience members' level of engagement and their identification with the characters. The mission of secular theater is to inspire political mobilization in disenfranchised communities. Audiences are awakened as they empathize with theatrical characters who portray their own sense of hopelessness. In addition to occupying both seats, those of actor and audience member, Afzal-Khan approaches her analysis of this kind of activism from more than one vantage point. Although she grew up in Pakistan, she now lives and works in the United States. Once a theater artist, she is now an academic, with class privilege, as she says. Although at one time, she was an insider, she now views herself as an outsider in relation to Punjabi culture. Consequently, her methodology for researching secular theater is accompanied by an ever-present autocritique: selfidentification that runs to her analysis of secular alternative theater. She reminds the reader that her cultural research is not free of First World biases. She also dismisses the possibility that she might be able to speak about theater as a native informant. In a moving reflection about her particular brand of being both inside and outside of her culture of origin, Afzal-Khan states, [It] continues to 'break my heart' because it reminds me that I [am] no longer there, nor here. …

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