Pakistan: Broadway Bridges
American Voices tours Pakistan and prepare joint performances of excerpts from Grease, Hairspray and Les Miz with Pakistani music, dance and theater students.
For three weeks the American Voices Broadway Bridges team toured Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad Pakistan working with a half-dozen theater companies and hundreds of young actors, dancers and musicians.
From our first meeting with Pakistani journalists and our Karachi program partners, Made for Stage Theater, it was clear that our visit was going to feed Pakistan’s hunger for contact with this unique American genre.
The rest of the Karachi visit was one eye-opening meeting after the other: Made for Stage Theater was a dream to work with: amazing talent, fantastic singing and dancing, having just presented Mamma Mia and Chicago in the past season. We spent 6 days together preparing a Revue program with ‘Grease’, ‘Rent’ and ‘Hairspray’ excerpts. This was the real thing and we immensely enjoyed our work with this impeccable cast. There was huge media coverage by a half dozen television stations and several full and half-page spreads in local newspapers (see photos section on this page). The interest in this project and Broadway coming to Karachi was amazing.
From Karachi we proceeded to Lahore where we worked with the amazing theater students of Government College University. This talented troupe learned ‘15 Minute Hamlet’ in three days adding their own quite original slapstick elements. We also worked with the youth of the Interactive Resource Center, an NGO using social theater programs in Pakistan's hotspots, such as the Northwest Frontier Provinces, to counteract radicalization among youth.
Islamabad was again a hotbed of musical theater activity with talent bursting out all over. We were happy to work in the great venue at the Pakistan National Center for the Arts in a show greeted by a full house clamoring for more musical theater.
The program was funded by the U.S. Embassy to Pakistan.
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Meeting Pakistani Journalists
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Stage Movement workshop with Thespianz Theater of Karachi
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Nicest Kids in Town in Karachi
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We Go Together from Grease
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Interview with Pakistan Youth TV
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Nida Butt of Made for Stage Theater
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Full House in Karachi
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Reading of Jekyll and Hyde
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Carole McCann at Peeru Cafe workshop in Lahore
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Initial Reading of 15 Minute Hamlet
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Hamlet and Horatio
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The Poisoned Chalice
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Punjabi Gravedigger
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Ophelia Overdoes It
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At the Play
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Music Rehearsals in Islamabad for Hairspray
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Music Rehearsals in Islamabad at National Center for the Arts
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Art for Kashmir
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Karachi - The News Article
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Karachi The News part 2
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Article in The Nation from Karachi Concert
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The Nation - Workshop Article
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Daily Times Article
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Nicest Kids in Islamabad
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Cast Photo Islamabad
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Footloose in Islamabad
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Dizzy Fingers in Islamabad
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Rent in Islamabad
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Kiss of the Spider Woman
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Comes So Far from Hairspray
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Director of Pakistan Natl Center for the Arts Opens Show
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US Embassy's Larry Schwarz Opens Show
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