‘King of Nothing’, a mono drama, is aiming to bring back that genre of theatre wherein a character directly communicates with the audience or thinks out aloud when alone or while the other actors are silent.
Maas Foundation is presenting King of Nothing – a thought-provoking monologue performance – on Wednesday (December 22) at Lahore’s Alhamra. Hassan Raza – one of the brilliant theatre artists of Lahore – will perform this 65-minute mono drama, written and directed by Aamir Nawaz.
‘King of Nothing’ depicts the man’s journey in which he realises the relations he lost due to his ‘toxic’ masculinity as he ponders over the different stages of life. It is a message for men to refrain from using gendered language that equates male body with strength, and the female body and weakness.
According to the director, this ‘king’ is a person who will share memories from his life of his love, cowardliness, loneliness, stupid acts and selfishness. The character will also share his memories that how he lost his life (his wife) along with incidents of his married life.
As time passes, the character realizes that he lost everything that made him a ‘king’ – a ‘king of nothing’. His tagline is one to remember, which is that he is not married anymore because he knows how to speak.
The director said that this performance will take audience at a level where they will start to explore a ‘King of Nothing’ in themselves. He also said that this performance was presented in third International Theatre Festival organized by the Cultural Ministry of Turkmenistan at Ashgabat back in November 2019 with standing ovation from the audience.
The choreographer for this performance is Gulshan Majeed while the music is designed by Imran Nawaz. A renowned composer from Germany, James Douglas, designed and composed the theme song.
The play can be watched through invitation-only passes available at Alhamra and on social media.
