American artists have expressed their intention to again visit Pakistan after seeing that their performance resonated with the audience here at the Pakistan Theatre Festival, which is being held at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi.
“I feel so warmed. It’s actually a little bit performing because it feels so meaningful to feel how the language of our performance reached the audience and that movement and the body is a universal language,” Nicholette Routhier told Aaj News after her performance on Monday.
Routhier is part of UpLift Physical Theatre from the United States which is performing a show titled Through the Waves at the festival. The festival began on September 7 and would continue till October 8.
Around seven international and 27 prominent national theatre groups will be performing at the festival. The festival would feature plays in various languages, including Urdu, English, Turkish, German, Sinhala, Persian, Punjabi & Sindhi.
“It feels really special. I never imagined that I get to experience something like this. It’s really a dream come true,” Routhier added.
When asked, she said they would love to come back again to Pakistan. “This has been an incredible experience. The Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi,” she said and praised the Arts Council of Pakistan for being “so innovative and so collaborative”.
The performing artist was hopeful of future collaboration with Pakistan.
Throw the Waves tells the story of a woman who loses her husband in a car accident, but the story deals with the moment after she receives this news. The group uses dance, acrobatics, and theatre to tell how grief is experienced in full human experience.
“I love the Pakistani audience because I can feel them breathing, remarking, and cheering during the show we don’t have that as much in the US. It’s usually silent,” said Hannah Gaff, another artist from the theatre company.
She was delighted to feel the audience in Pakistan.
Gaff was looking forward to Pakistani theatre. “I think the beautiful thing about the theatrical story telling that no matter where you are, we find different ways of telling those stories so that are universally human.”
