Beena Sarwar: Int'l Performing Arts Fest Spotlights Liberal Pakistan

LAHORE, Nov 18 (IPS) - Some 370 foreign actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers have defied the warnings of their friends, families and governments to participate in an international performing arts festival in Lahore, cultural capital of the world’s ‘most dangerous country’.

The privately organised 12th World Performing Arts Festival, Nov 13-23, showcases Pakistani and international dance, theatre, film, music, and puppetry in the largest such event in the region.

This is the 26th international festival organised by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW), a group launched in Karachi in the early 1980s by the family of the late Rafi Peer, the Germany-educated ‘grand old man’ of modern Pakistani theatre who died in 1974. His youngest sons, twins Faizaan and Sadaan, started out with puppet and theatre performances in Karachi.

In 1992, they organised the first international festival in their native Lahore, springing from artist Faizaan’s passion for puppets, bringing together puppeteers from around the world. Since then, the Peerzadas (literally, ‘Peer’s sons’) as the family is called, have organised up to three international festivals a year, showcasing puppetry, dance, music, and theatre.

The World Performing Arts Festival brings together all these disciplines, plus film.....