On Sept 26, 1964, The New Shakespeare Company arrived in Karachi. It was in the city to stage three plays — The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew and Richard III. The company had been performing at the Open-Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, London, for a couple of years before
On Sept 30, the New Shakespeare Company performed The Tempest in the Jamshed Memorial Hall.
Among those who came to see the drama were different groups of students.
The Pakistan Writers Guild (PWG) of those days was trying to create a viable book reading culture in both wings of the country (not that Pakistan didn’t have one). On Oct 3, the acting secretary general of the guild, Jamiluddin Aali, announced that the PWG would open two more book sales centres in Dacca and Lahore where books could be bought at cheaper rates to make ‘good’ reading material accessible to the public. Noble thought, indeed. But these days it’s difficult to know how readers in Dacca reacted to it.
