A performance by senior but forgotten actress of the small screen Roohi Bano, a couple of painting exhibitions and two music concerts were the major cultural highlights in Lahore during the week that ended Sunday, June 3, 2007.
It was good to see ailing (now recovered) senior actress Roohi Bano performing in a play staged at the Lahore Arts Council before a standing-room-only audience on June 2, 2007 after a long hiatus. It was a sort of reincarnation of a mega star, who was removed from the stage and TV by an incapacitating mental disorder, when she was at the peak of her career and popularity.
Written and directed by Asim Amjad, Art Therapist at Fountain House, the five-part play Roohi ki kahani, Roohi ki zubani was sponsored jointly by the Fountain House and Society for Youth Support and Women's Advancement.
The staging of the play was an attempt at rehabilitating one of the senior most artistes of Pakistan television, by showing that she is now fit enough to enact even serious roles in television and stage dramas with the same verve and feeling as she did during the heyday of her career. A large number of showbiz personalities attended the play to express solidarity with Roohi Bano and also to encourage her to get back into the professional mainstream.
It was the first time that the play was staged at an open forum. Previously, it was acted within the confines of the Fountain House which also known as 'the half-way-home'.
Revolving around the vicissitudes of the life of Roohi Bano, the play focused on her passion and commitment to acting, joining showbiz, her meteoric rise to fame, interaction with producers and directors and her downfall. Addressing the audience at the completion of the presentation, she a resolved for to re-enter showbiz, as she felt fit to enough take another plunge in the world of entertainment.
On May 31, the Punjab University College of Arts and Design sponsored a Performing Arts Workshop at the Lahore Arts Council with the avowed aim to develop among the participants, skills in the creative processes, including script-writing, lighting, designing, costume making, sound engineering, direction, acting, voice and body language.
Instructors at the six-week workshop are Amjad Islam Amjad, Farooq Zameer, Salman Shahid, Ahmed Bilal and Shahnawaz Zaidi. The certificate awarding ceremony to the participants of the workshop will be held by the middle of July at the termination of the workshop.
'Trade Union' was the title of a unique exhibition of portraits jointly prepared by Quddus Mirza and Tanya Suhail, which opened on May 30 at the Zahurul Akhlaq Gallery of the National College of Arts, Lahore. It was the first exhibition after the take-over of the gallery with Quddus Mirza as the curator.
The exhibition is geared to showcase those works, in which an artist has portrayed an other.
So in a way, these paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, contain double portraits- suggesting the figure and personality of the subject and at the same time revealing the style and thoughts of the maker: two individuals who are united through the similarity of their trade, time and ideas.
The exhibition includes the portraits of most of the senior artists of Pakistan, including Abdur Rehman Chughtai, Anna Molka Ahmed, Saeed Akhter, Iqbal Geoffrey and a number of other famous creative persons of the country.
The annual exhibition of art works including textile designs by the students of Beaconhouse University attracted the attention of a large number of art lovers at the Art Gallery of the Lahore Arts Council. The special feature was the participation in the exhibition by students from SAARC countries - Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan.
The news that the Senate Standing Committee on Culture has reportedly urged the Ministry of Culture not to wait for the completion of the building and open the National Art Gallery to the public has pleased the Lahore-based practitioners of visual arts they had been agitating against the change in the name of the Gallery at the behest of the current Director-General of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, who had a special bias for the performing arts. According to newspaper reports, the NA Standing Committee has asked the Ministry of Culture to urge the President of Pakistan to inaugurate the opening on June 15.
On May 25, the Nairang Art Galleries hosted a concert by a relatively unknown classical vocalist Akbar Ali, who claims to be a pupil of Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan. His rendition of the somewhat out-of-circulation ragas Hans Dhun and Sarswati was appreciated by a small but select gathering of music lovers.
At the monthly concert of the All Pakistan Music Conference held at the Lahore Arts Council on June 1 the duo of classical vocalists 'Ghulam Shabir Khan and Akbar Ali Khan, made a demonstration of their skill at kheyal singing. The concert was open to the members of the APMC.
Tahir Mirza, one of the better known journalists of Pakistan and former editor of DAWN, who started his career from Lahore some 50 years ago, was laid to rest close to his former residence in Model Town on May 30.
His funeral was attended by a large number of senior journalists, some of whom have worked with the late editor in Lahore during the decades of 1960s and 1970s.
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