RAWALPINDI: A short play titled Intizar was performed at the National College of Arts (NCA) Rawalpindi on Monday, which highlighted prisoners on death row, the flaws in the criminal justice system and police brutality.

The performance featured actors from the Ajoka Theatre troupe, and was held in the NCA courtyard in collaboration with the Justice Project Pakistan and the United Kingdom-based theatre company Highlight Arts. The event was attended by students, university staff, foreign dignitaries and media professionals.

The play was set in a Pakistani prison where death row inmates await red warrants for their executions, in miserable conditions.

The characters included not only prisoners – including an educated prisoner who teaches in the jail, a painter, a musician and physically disabled inmate – but also their relatives, who wait outside the prison to collect the body of the executed prisoners.

The stories of the characters in Intizar are based on true stories. Director Dina Mousawi, writer Shahid Nadeem and producer Ran Van Winkle visited prisons in Pakistan to observe the lives of their inmates.

The primary theme of the play was the never-ending wait for the inmates – whether they wait for courts to decide their cases, for their relatives to meet them or their executions.

On average, a convicted murderer spends 11 years and 49 days on death row in Pakistan.

The play roused the emotions among the audience, who were gripped by scenes featuring court proceedings, executions, dialogue between the convicts, the inmates’ monologues and their meetings with their relatives.

Speaking to the media, Highlight Arts representative Mr Winkle said they wanted to use the medium of theatre to raise awareness among students from various educational institutions about the death penalty and the flaws in the criminal justice system.

He said they had been performing in educational institutions to bring students closer to the characters in the play, in a bid to better highlight the plight of death row inmates.

Nayyab, who played a human rights lawyer, said she wanted to bring the topic to bigger forums – such as television and cinema, but added that Ajoka has no such plans so far.

One of the castmembers, who played a death row inmate, said he had had little knowledge about the problems that face prisoners and held negative views of them.

He said he visited two or three prisons to observe the environment of the prisons, and after participating in the play his perspective on prison inmates had changed.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2017