Pakistan Reference library
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...in recent years; Madeeha Gauhar is a leading actress of stage and television and founding director of the alternative theatre group Ajoka in Lahore. Political theatre emerged in Pakistan in the late 1970s, primarily as a pro-democratic response to an increasingly repressive state apparatus. It takes the forms of street theatre or alternative theatre (also called ‘parallel’ or protest theatre) and has contributed much to the growing debate around issues of human rights and gender equity ( see politics and theatre ). It had two predecessors. First, the...
Cairo Reference library
Hazem M. Azmy
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...( see finance ) or censorship . In the 1960s the alliance between the government and the intelligentsia proved all the more dismal, with the former setting its repressive apparatus to work where the ideological one failed. Many playwrights turned to historical and mythical settings to hide political messages. Under Nasser these messages typically blamed the well-meaning head of state for surrounding himself with corrupt advisers and alienating himself from the voice of the people. Such were the themes of Diab's Bab El-Futuh ( The Gateway to...
