Presentation to Madam Naima

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MODERN LANGUAGES,

LAHORE CAMPUS.

Presented by: Bakhtawer Khurshid & Imran Talib. (MA Eng SEM2 Eve)

.

About author. It’s a three act play written by him. Author was born in Mandi Bahuaddin, Punjab 1978 Usman Ali completed his

M.phill in Literature from Punjab University Lahore. Ali wrote the dramatic scripts for Hamlets madness at British

Councils celebration of shakesphere’s birthday. He also wrote a script of an imagined interview with Robert

frost in 2001 and has his credit to an english translation of a book of Gulzar The Speaking Silence.

He is currently associated with University of Gujrat and University of Sargodha.

Death• It’s a poem written by Ted Hughes.Poet starts the poem with a question about life, about how paltry it is.He writes I am like a magnet of the universe and have powers of death.Life indeed an aberration.Its a soul talking that when I am alive in the body of a man he dies and when I am alive in the body of the lady she dies.And now he is awake and immoral.Comparing and contrasting immortality.

Author’s Note:• Couldn’t write a word from two months.• No one had read The guilt.• Characters of The guilt are dying because of not being heard.• Fate of them that cant be changed.• Drama starts by dissolving the shells of ego.• Drama is intense than fiction or poetry.• But The Guilt has not changed anything.• People don’t understand the true intensity of drama and affects on a society in

general.• Usman Ali had a dream about Mastana’s work results.• Phone rang up, it was a student wanted to do thesis on his work but Usman Ali

hang up the phone because students in Pakistan do it for the sake of degrees only.

.Mandi Bahauddin to Gujrat.

• He heard sound of bone cracking in the bus.• When the bus was on rest he saw it was a dog who was being

crushed by the van.• Meanwhile another bus rolled over the face of the dog. Usman Ali

was shunned over there.• He was full of guilt he sat down and started writing a drama this

time it is titled “ THE LAST METHPHOR” .

Why did Usman Ali wrote this ?

Audience was not understanding the characters and characters were dying for not being heard. Characters were breathing their last but the audience was invisible. Where is the audience? Nobody knows. Things were going completely against the will of the writer he wanted to write but things were not cooperating. He wrote this to provoke people’s thoughts and vast their vision and to call them back for theater’s sake. He knew people were going away from literature and are more into Arts just to complete their degrees.Usman Ali wanted to make people realise that dramas keep the strength to change a society but people are unable to recognize the perks of it and the sense of society. He wants people to come to literature as it can be more fruitful for the society.

Act 1:• It starts with a room and severe cold weather.• Entrance of Jugnoo on the stage.• Jugnoo and his mask carrying a dead body rapped in a white sheet.• In the beggning he doesn’t show his face to the audience.• Banka enters.• *Conversations*• Afraid of the door knocks. On the second knock the come to know it was

an Electricity bill.• Banka tells Jugnoo to be brave and break the wall of his fears people in

town call him runway and loser police is searching for him everywhere .• Banka asks about the dead body buy Jugno doesn’t tell anything.

.• Police captures some boys in the street everyone out there watching cheap theatre without curtains.

• Banka doing his regular hair and washings.• He is watching the whole scenario while cutting hairs of his

cheeks gently. • Banka starts telling about his art and robe and well

profession.• Knock at the door again• Jugnoo takes out bottle of scent from his body and moves the

dead body.• Banka goes to the kitchen and tell him about his father and

brother’s death.

Review:Ali has a natural ability to describe human relations, at least the men in the two plays I’ve read. In some ways they are distant to my life but I easily recognize their humanity and their feelings. I think Ali lives in a society where experience is immediate and direct, not mediated through technology and gadgets. Ali has a working dramatic sense – the central relationship in The Last Metaphor is the classical one that appears often in Western theater and literature – Voltaire, Beckett, Candide, Bertie Wooster, Laurie and Hardy and so on. I’m not saying Ali makes the same use of the relationship, but he gives it a recognizable and usable foundation. What is important about Ali’s work is the raw experience he describes. The raw experiences, the use of the dead body, are the sort of things that stay in my mind. They seem to be part of Ali’s strength. The main thing is Ali’s natural talent which is able to convey direct experiences in a dramatic form.

Contact:• Email : info@uosmandibahauddin.edu.pk

Phone # +92546-509120,+92546-626523, +92300-6028537,0347-4212932

• University of Sargodha Mandi Bahauddin Campus,New Rasul Road Mandibahauddin.

Thank You!• ,