Theatre Wallay, with support from Total PARCO, Alliance Francaise D’ Islamabad, and the Embassy of France, performed Moliere’s The School for Wives (L’école des femmes) in Islamabad. It was performed for a select audience in the Diplomatic Enclave on July 14, 2019, and for the general public at the Farm @ Bani Gala on 17th and 18th July. Later it was taken to Lahore and Karachi.
Audiences thoroughly enjoyed it and were a bit surprised to find out how relevant this play was to Pakistan’s current social conditions. The School for Wives is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King. The play depicts a character who is so intimidated by femininity that he resolves to marry his young, naïve ward and proceeds to make clumsy advances to this purpose (Wikipedia).
Fizza Hasan, the director of the play, says, “It is incredible how the play, written in the 1660s, can still speak to audiences today, because the world has not changed very much since then”. Imran Iftikhar, the co-director who made his directorial debut with this play, believes “The characters, situations and themes are extremely relatable, and would be familiar to most people in the audience”.
To know more, please visit this page: The School for Wives
