| Sohail Ahmed | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sohail Akram Gujranwala, Pakistan |
| Other names | Azizi |
| Occupation | actor, producer, director and writer |
| Website | |
| http://www.hasbehaal.net/tag/sohail-ahmad/ | |
| Pride of Performance Award Recipient | |
|---|---|
Sohail Ahmed was recipient of the Pride of Performance Award 2011[1] |
|
| Presented by | Asif Ali Zardari |
| Date | 14-08-2010 |
| Country | Islamic Republic of Pakistan |
Sohail Ahmed (Urdu: سہیل احمد) (born Sohail Akram Butt), famously known as Azizi (Urdu: عزیزی), is a Pakistani comedian, and stage and TV actor. He is most notable for comedy stage dramas based in Lahore.
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He was born in Gujranwala, went to school at Millat High Gujranwala, graduated from Government College Gujranwala. His father Mian Muhammad Akram Butt was a senior Police Officer (Deputy Superintendent of Police). He is third in line of four brothers. The oldest brother Javid Akram is a journalist, the other older brother Mian Aurang Zaib Akram is an Educationist like the younger brother Muhammad Junaid Akram.
He is famous for using improvised dialogue during stage plays. He is an outspoken opponent of vulgarity and obscenity in stage dramas.[2] He is also the writer and director of many stage plays. Recently Mr. Sohail Ahmed has proved himself to be an outstanding director when he produced and directed his second Drama Serial SHAAM, which was written by Mr. Iqbal Hasan Khan, a known playwright and short story writer of Pakistan. This play went on air in January 2010.
Basically Azizi is a character name choosen by Aftab Iqbal while aftab iqbal was writing a column in daily "Nawa-e-waqat" named "Hasb e Haal".So the credit of Program name "Hasb e Haal"& character name "Azizi"goes to Aftab Iqbal. The character over time has come to symbolize the voice of sanity over the apparent apathy in the society. He mocks the flagrant disregard for law, lack of policy architecture by the government and equally blatant lack of incentive from the civil society to change the squalid they occupy. The popularity of the character is understandable in a society which has lost its relevance and looks at reality through half open conduits. Where scruples are sham and morals mostly a facade to impose upon each other one's perceived dominance: Azizi brings the freshness of being unabashedly pedestrian. He got lifetime achievement award this year in 2010. Azizi is one of the funniest character he has ever done.
The show Hasb e Haal airs on Dunya TV and then is downloaded on the internet through various media portals and distributed via social media websites. It has a viewership of 100,000 viewers on the internet ( mostly in Americas and Europe). The numbers are picked from youtube and www.pakistantime.net, there are surely ten times as many ( unaccounted in this study) viewers watching the show on cable TV. However if the internet numbers are seen as a sample study and a proportionate approximation is made about the larger viewer population - the raw data-points indicate that the character and the show has the highest hitrate count in the west for any show on air currently. In November 2010 Sohail got his life-time achievement award from Pakistan Television.
One of the abilities in Azizi's repertoire is his particular knack for coining novel words—words that are novel even at the atomic level i.e. he frequently introduces novel morphemes with surprising facility. He remains a subject for language researchers especially for those investigating whether languages evolve in punctuated bursts. The idea of punctuated evolution was first proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in the context of biological evolution. Recently Atkinson et al. [3] have demonstrated an interesting parallel in the evolution of languages, but in a forensic fashion by analyzing the vocabulary bursts in the histories of languages. Characters like Azizi help language researchers in pinning down the underlying engines that feed such vocabulary bursts.
Moreover, Azizi's character is a fodder for cognitive scientists interested in finding the neural basis of word formation. Not surprisingly, Azizi is also a trope -churning machine, constantly rejigging existing idioms and metaphors by skillful juxtapositions, transpositions, and more interestingly, generating new meaning by portmanteauing apparently disconnected tropes.
Considering the extent of credibility Azizi enjoys among his audience raises a fundamental question for students of performing arts—how to handle the pressures of responsibility that such a stature of credibility demands. Azizi is a living case study of how performers may handle a role that catapults them to a pedestal of credibility.
Most stage-drama fans know Sohail Ahmed as a comedian, however, most of his TV appearances, specially on Pakistan Television, have been in serious and often negative characters. He has played many diverse characters on TV which vary from a professional killer to a feudal lord.