{"id":2500,"date":"2007-11-19T11:45:04","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T15:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2007-11-19T12:53:08","modified_gmt":"2007-11-19T16:53:08","slug":"report-from-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/11\/19\/report-from-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Report from Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2153\/2046734825_a314973cb1.jpg\" height=\"367\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE:<\/strong><em> Toronto playwright (and our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialinnovation.ca\/\">Centre for Social Innovation<\/a> neighbour) Darren O&#8217;Donnell is in Pakistan  working on a production of Diplomatic Immunities, his play that premeired last year here in Toronto. Research for the production requires being out in public and interacting with folks on the street. He and his company are writing about the experience <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mammalianemergency.blogspot.com\/\">on their blog<\/a> &#8212; but we asked him to give us a quick take on what life is like on the streets of Pakistan under emergency rule.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in Pakistan developing and presenting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mammalian.ca\/template.php?content=home\">Mammalian Diving Reflex&#8217;s Diplomatic Immunities<\/a> in the World Performing Arts Festival. Before the company left Canada there was a lot of discussion about our safety and we agreed that if the festival was canceled we would skip it and head straight to Mumbai to research an upcoming project. The festival was not canceled, despite emergency rule, and here we are.<\/p>\n<p>Back home, the media coverage was making us all very nervous &#8212; it was easy to imagine that chaos dominated the country. And while,  to my eyes, the streets do seem filled with chaos, it&#8217;s mostly the way people drive and little else. Our director of video, Faisal Anwar, a native of Lahore, had come a week before the rest of us and complained in an email about the West&#8217;s coverage of the events: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153<em>I will try not to ever read any news anywhere. Now I realized what&#8217;s actually the purpose of  today&#8217;s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153news\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. There are no lies, no truth, no sharing &#8212; it just works for a bigger agenda. People and the name of Pakistan only suffer.<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>There has no doubt been violence here, the detention of thousands of lawyers and activist is viewed as a bad move on Musharaff&#8217;s part by everyone we&#8217;ve talked to, but things are as calm as they were when we were here last year. I don&#8217;t see much of an overt military presence and we &#8212; with our group of 5 Canadians and 5 Pakistanis constantly drawing a crowd &#8212; has been able to do our research undisturbed. We don&#8217;t relish the idea of arguing the difference between Art and Media but, so far, we&#8217;re good and we haven&#8217;t had to.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an ambivalence here to all the recent action. Musharaff&#8217;s closing of GEO, the all-news channel, has been characterized as a good thing by Sadaan Peerzada, dirctor of the World Performing Arts Festival, who claims that the station was too sensational, always looking at the negative and always willing to sell out. In what seems like a bizarre ideological contradiction to me, Peerzada tells me that GEO both defends the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153terrorists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the Red Mosque against the action of the government (one of GEO&#8217;s fatal moves) as well as sells airtime to the American&#8217;s who broadcast two hours of propaganda a day. If you&#8217;re looking to understand events here along a Pro-Jihad vs. Pro-American axis, you&#8217;ll end up confused.<\/p>\n<p>Our collaborators, Faisal Anwar and Wajeehah Sabahat, support Peezada&#8217;s postion, telling me that they and their families are happy that GEO has been shut down, that the station was spreading pessimism in a country that&#8217;s pessimistic enough.<\/p>\n<p>Peerzada surprises me when he tells me that Musharaff has been the best thing to happen to the arts, that the festival has grown during his reign, they receive a lot more funding and that during Bhutto&#8217;s last tenure, they were constantly under threat of being shut down. Why, I asked, did he think this was? I expected an answer about Musharaff understanding the power of culture, and the necessity to have that sector on your side if you&#8217;re going to try to rule militarily, but Peerzade replied: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBecause Musharaff likes music.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; Darren O&#8217;Donnell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Toronto playwright (and our Centre for Social Innovation neighbour) Darren O&#8217;Donnell is in Pakistan working on a production of Diplomatic Immunities, his play that premeired last year here in Toronto. Research for the production requires being out in public and interacting with folks on the street. He and his company are writing about<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/11\/19\/report-from-pakistan\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Report from Pakistan&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4010,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[457,788,492,353,22100,7325,7322,808,2139,21,7324,7323,19,7326],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-canada","tag-centre-for-social-innovation","tag-darren-odonnell","tag-director","tag-editor","tag-faisal-anwar","tag-lahore","tag-media-coverage","tag-mumbai","tag-other-cities","tag-pakistan","tag-red-mosque","tag-toronto","tag-wajeehah-sabahat"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Report from Pakistan - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/11\/19\/report-from-pakistan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Report from Pakistan - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Toronto playwright (and our Centre for Social Innovation neighbour) Darren O&#8217;Donnell is in Pakistan working on a production of Diplomatic Immunities, his play that premeired last year here in Toronto. 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