KARACHI: When you’re doing a two-hander on stage, it generally implies that the story is heavily dialogue-driven. For that to succeed, the lines that the two characters speak need to have a certain

degree of eloquence (in case eloquence is required) or flair (in case free-spiritedness is needed) for the story to sound plausible — not just look believable.

The opening play of the National Academy of Performing Arts’ (Napa) Original Playwrights Theatre Festival (or original plays festival) titled Musafir on Friday evening was a decent effort.

Written and directed by Farhan Alam Siddiqui, who is now a seasoned theatre practitioner belonging to one of the initial batches to have passed out of the academy, the drama had its ebb and flow moments.

Written and directed by Farhan Alam Siddiqui, Musafir is the first of the four plays to be staged

Musafir begins with a man (Syed Qasim Ali Shah) waiting to board a train. He needs to be at some conference. He is wearing a suit and a bag is slung over his shoulder. The conference bit comes to light when he talks to his wife on the phone, getting agitated by trying to make her understand what he’s up for. As he sits on a bench for a breather, a woman (Sabiha Zia) joins him.

She is a loquacious person who, just out of the blue, starts interacting with him (pretty much like Geet played brilliantly by Kareena Kapoor in the film Jab We Met) because she’s heard him talking to his better half. Ten or so minutes into the conversation, the man says to her ‘tumhein merey barey mein kafi kuch pata hai (you know quite a bit about me)’ and a few minutes later ‘kiya tum hamaisha se aisi ho? (have you always been like this).’

As their chitchat carries on revealing a trifle more about the characters’ private lives, the trope of ‘chasing dreams’ comes up. When the story starts to taper off, a twist catches the audience.

Earlier, the COO of Napa, Sameeta Ahmed, while addressing the guests said ever since the founder of Napa, the late Zia Mohyeddin, laid the foundation of the academy, the institute has tried to set a standard for plays and maintain that standard.

It is in that connection that fresh scripts from all over the country were selected for the festival through an open call. And through a blind and fair process, the jury read all the scripts and ended up selecting four of them, she said.

Afreen Seher, the curator of the festival and head of the academy’s theatre department, gave out details of the event.

Featuring four original plays, the festival will run until till June 21.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2025