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Throughout our history, women in the performing arts have contributed immensely to Pakistan's cultural heritage. They have enriched our lives through their artistic performances, despite experiencing serious personal hardships and social stigma for engaging in their chosen profession. Forgotten Faces acknowledges the contribution of the women who performed in Pakistan's rural folk theatre and provides a women's perpective on this entertainment business.

This book describes the nimadic theatre companies that once romed widely across the sub-contiment, providing entertainment for the rural masses. The book covers the period of the folk theatre in Pakistan from their heyday in 1980s when this rntertainment genre had all but disappeared. The culture of these theatre groups, the lives of the actors, their engagement with their audiences, and the dynmics of their business and personal relationships have been captured in a manner that removes the veneer of romance to reveal the reakity beneath.

The core of the book highlights the lives of several prominent women of Pakistan's folk theatre. The life of the legendary Bali Jatti, a widely popular theater actress who became the only women to own and manage a theater group forms the centrepiece of the narrative. He bittersweet reminiscences reveal both the joys she obtained from the adulation of the audiences as well as the sorrows she endured throughout her entire life whenever she was off the tage.

The historical patterns seen in the lives of these women continue to echo in the lives of the female performers in our modern television and film industries, but working women in any field can easily relate to the balance these women had to strike between family, the public and the calling of their professions.