Recent Press reports have indicated that the Punjab government has divested City District Government, Lahore of the powers of taking legal cognizance of the out-of-script performances and vulgar dances, which has become a rule rather than an exception with commercial theatre in Lahore.
In the past, the Nazim of City District Government was invested with powers to take legal action against producers, directors, actors and owners of theatres, which allegedly encouraged vulgarity through their productions. In fact, the CDG took legal action against a number of personnel associated with commercial theatre in Lahore on charges of presenting vulgar dances and double meaning out of the script dialogue.
The owners of theatres in Lahore, it is alleged, have immediately returned to their old ways soon after learning about the withdrawal of powers of CDG Nazim. The theatres in Lahore started presentation of vulgar dances pointing to highly provocative amorous gestures by female dancers. Those people who want to watch theatre with their families now feel inhibited to sit in the theatre halls with their daughters.
Lahore has remained a repository of healthy commercial theatre for well over a century. A large number of famous theatre companies of yore made their debuts from this city by staging drams at the improvised halls at a circular garden that once ringed the old walled city. Despite the fact that male actors enacted the roles of heroines in the plays in those days, the owners of theatres were never accused of spreading vulgarity.
Historically, rural milieu in the Punjab has been steeped in the long traditions of theatre, which went back to centuries. In what is now called the Lok Theatre, it was used to project the yearnings, hopes and fears of the people through dialogue that were suffused with rural images and metaphors.
In the present context, to many people, especially city dwellers, theatre means an entertainment, which has become associated with neon signs and phony glitter, with the opulence and gaudiness that mask shallowness. But before their presentations started degenerating, touring theatre companies provided a better alternative, especially for the village folks, who were entertained by the millions every year. Although a majority of those theatres originated from Lahore, it was not so much of a matter of location as it was a state of mind. If city theatre evoked images of shallowness and superficial slickness, the touring rural theatre brought to the mind images of dedicated artistes, who spent their lives in a gypsy-like lifestyle, always on the move, visiting places located through the vastness of Punjab's hinterland.
Prior to the advent of cinema and radio all large theatre groups were based in Lahore, a town, which had not attained the status of a large city then. In those days in Lahore, theatre was the only source of collective entertainment for the people. Located in the Circular Garden, especially outside Bhatti Gate, these theatrical companies later fanned out into the countryside, visiting small towns and villages where their presentations were lustily cheered and enthusiastically applauded by entertainment hungry village folk.
The inception of television in November 1964 in Lahore created more avenues of entertainment, which were made available to the people in their living rooms. But it resulted in the slow but sure death of theatre companies a few of which were then in circulation. In combination with cinema, the new medium of television deprived many people associated with theatre of their livelihood.
However, things changed for the better for theatre when Pakistan film industry, due to a variety of reasons, collapsed after the decade of 1970s, making room for commercial theatre to surface once again. But the theatre of the pre electronic media era and the post television period was different from each other in their contents and format.
For many years, the Lahore (Alhamra) Arts Council promoted healthy theatre through the efforts of genuine artistes, for whom money (which was not there anyway) was not prime motivation. But when crisis overtook the film industry, many cinema halls were converted into theatre as an alternative to entertainment provided by motion pictures. Behind the upsurge of theatre was a desire on the part of cinema owners to make money as a compensation for the loss of film business. This motivation gave rise to the induction of vulgarity in the gestures and script of stage dramas. It was then that CDG took notice of the growing trend of amorous gestures in stage dramas.
It is time that the government took serious notice of increasingly vulgar contents of theatre plays that are being staged in Lahore and other cities in the country. This is necessary to insulate the impressionable minds of the youth from the damaging effects of vulgarity.