Alter Ego Blog

Alter Ego Productions is pleased to announce Tariq Ali's The Leopard and the Fox as our forthcoming production. The Leopard and the Fox was originally written in 1985 as a three part BBC screenplay that follows the last days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first popularly elected prime minister of Pakistan, deposed in a coup, and then put to death by hanging in 1979 by his former chief of army staff, General Zia ul Haq, who became the President of Pakistan, only to die himself in mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1988.

Alter Ego is in the midst of adapting the riveting drama of these two outsize personalities battling each other to a standoff in their quest for power. In life and death the actions of these men and their consequences have not just influenced Pakistan but divided the country, into legions of their detractors and supporters, passionately arguing about each leader's contribution to the failure and success in their country's history. The reverberations of that period in Pakistan's history is being felt in the international arena today.

Tariq Ali's screenplay was controversial and was flagged by the legal department of the BBC for the potential lawsuits that it could have engendered. Rather than face the legal consequence, the BBC decided to can the production. The casting had almost been done and luminaries like Naseeruddin Shah (to play Bhutto) and Angelica Huston had agreed to their roles. The screenplay was finally published by Seagull Books in October 2006.

The synopsis:

"The BBC commissioned Tariq Ali to write a three-part TV series on the circumstances leading to the overthrow, trial and execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. As rehearsals were about to begin, the BBC hierarchy - under pressure from the Foreign Office - decided to cancel the project. Why? General Zia ul Haq, the dictator at the time, was leading the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He was backed by the USA. According to expert legal opinion, there was a possibility of a whole range of defamation suits from the head of state to judges involved in the case. In consequence, it was decided not to broadcast this hard-hitting and provocative play. "The Leopard and the Fox" presents both the script and the story of censorship."

Alter Ego is planning to stage the play mid October at TBG Main Space at 312, 36th St and 8th Avenue.

Tariq Ali is a very well known activist and writer. He is an editor at the New Left Review and has written many critically acclaimed books like The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), Bush in Bablylon (2003), and Conversations with Edward Said (2005).

We are extremely pleased to announce that Giovanna Sardelli, one of the rising new stars is directing the play. Giovanna is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of Arts and is on their faculty teaching acting. She has directed, amongst other plays, Rajiv Joseph's Huck and Holden (Cherry Lane Development Series), All that Intimacy (Second Stage Uptown), and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Lark Play Development Center). She is a Creative associate at the Lark Theater and is on the faculty at NYU, teaching acting at the Tisch.

Rajiv Joseph is writing the adaptation. Rajiv is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of Arts and has written Huck and Holden and All That Intimacy, two plays that were very well received and attracted a good deal of attention. He most recently wrote Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, as part of the Lark Development series. Rajiv also teaches expository writing in NYU’s College of Arts and Science.

The new production comes on the heels of Alter Ego's very successful 2006 production A First Class Man. We played to full houses and garnered very good reviews from the theater critics.