"JHALI KITHAY JAWAY"
(Where should the mad woman go?)

---

March - 1990 (Lahore)


Written by: Shahid Nadeem
Directed by: Madeeha Gauhar

“Jhali Kithay Javay” is story of a young bride whose husband goes to Dubai immediately after the wedding and is unable to return because of the demands of a family who have more affection for his income than for himself. Unable to join her husband in Dubai, the wife feels abandoned and her loneliness and frustration gradually manifests itself in acute depression. Apart from being a forceful indictment of a society ridden with superstition and of the maltreatment within the family of the new “bride” the play also comments on the growing consumerism penetrating Pakistani society as a result of the “Dubai phenomenon”. The story is linked by two narrators (ravi) in the traditional style and is mostly illustrated through dance, music and dialogues in verse form. The play has been performed at the second South Asian People’s Theatre Festival in Dhaka in October, 1993 and at the first South Asian People’s Theatre Festival in 92 at Lahore. It has won four out of five awards at the Institute of Folk Heritage National Theatre Festival in 1988.

---

Review: Nadeem has used as little dialogue as is possible, in fact made music and recitation take the place of what might have been verbosity. Props too have been used minimally. So much is left to the imagination that one becomes almost excited by what one’s imagination manages for one. All the evil of the oppression of the new bride are exposed in mime, dance movement and recitation. She has little hope of survival against it all, but she has a staunch and strong spirit and opposes their machinations. Mime has been perfected by the director and Jahan Ara, who takes over the whole mood of the despair of a forsaken bride. (Viewpoint, April 5, 1990)