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Scenes of a festival

BHAWANI CHEERATH

The National Theatre Festival showcased plays that drew on both traditional and contemporary themes and ways of presentation.



Dramatic moments: (from left to right) ‘Tritiya Juddha,’ “Ghumayee’ and ‘…And Indrajit’ were some of the plays staged in connection with the National Theatre Festival in Thiruvananthapuram.

A National Theatre Festival showcasing presentations from across the country drew on the traditional and the contemporary for themes, and structure. Coming to Thiruvananthapuram and Kerala after over a decade it was a welcome presence for theatre ent husiasts.

‘Gandhi Ambedkar’ in Kannada, staged by Natana from Mysore, took one through the personalities of two ‘tall’ figures in India’s history, Gandhi and Ambedkar, their differing priorities and the traits that they displayed through their attempts to make a point. In the exchanges between the two, a question that often raises its head is why they could never work as a united force when they had the common weal in mind.

The two leaders contest which is a more important freedom: freedom from the British or liberation of the oppressed. The Vidushaks in the play expose the chinks in the armour of the leaders. Heavy on dialogue, a major part of the 120-minute play went unheard because of the faulty sound system!


‘Ghumayee,’ a play in Dogri, was staged on the second day of the festival by the Jammu-based theatre group ‘Natrang.’ ‘Zindagi Retire Nahi Hoti’ and ‘Khuli Hawa Ki Talaash Mein’ presented by CEVA Drama and Repertory Company from Chandigarh took us through themes that are very close to our lives but ones we rarely stop to remedy.
The battle within

The content of the first play was obvious in the title but the directors G.S. Chani and Harleen Kohli kept it down to earth because the message had to reach the intended target. Drawing on live examples of conflict you are reminded that the real battle is within yourself and not with the world outside. Life, per se, is not tiresome, it is ways of looking that make it so, we are told by the senior-most member of the cast.

A street play on environmental degradation, ‘Khuli Hawa Ki Talaash Mein’ is peopled with plastic, tetrapack and polythene reigning supreme as characters, and life struggling to get that bit of air to breathe! The nexus between big money and politicians and the machinations of the corporate world are communicated.

Standing apart from the seven plays presented at the Festival was ‘Quick Death’ by Sankar Venkateswaran, artistic director of Roots and Wings. The synchronisation of sound and light to enhance the development of the theme and the precision involved could not be missed. A play is a physical text consisting of 51 scenes, some as long as three minutes and some as short as three seconds. This could be considered an introduction to a new kind of theatre for a large number of the people present that evening. It was disorienting to many an eye unused to undue use of technology and technique in theatre.

J. Shailaja’s ‘Supermarket’ and Probir Guha’s ‘Tritiya Juddha’ took us through the impact of globalisation. Each relied on their locality to delineate the idea. While ‘Supermarket’ touched on a host of issues affecting the individual and society in these times of corporatisation of the world, it seemed too wordy and cluttered. Based on the Dario Fo play ‘We Won’t Pay!,’ the director had brought it close to the Kerala reality.
Issues of globalisation

In a totally different manner one felt that the same message was more effectively communicated in the Bengali play by Probir Guha. Recreating the mood of a harvest in the rural community it raised the issue of being gobbled up by the policies of globalisation, with little or no dialogue and created the mood with music. Here certainly was theatre of protest.


Badal Sircar’s ‘Evam Indrajit’ was a milestone in Indian theatre; naturally, therefore, every edition of the same by any other group will suffer comparison. Jaidev Hattangadi’s troupe Kalashray presented ‘…And Indrajit’ on the closing day of the Festival. One that questions the crisis in the individual, the need to conform, and paths of multiple truths that overlap burden the writer whose quest takes labyrinthine twists. Amal, Vimal, Kamal and Indrajiit are four young men who move through stages of life as carefree young men to burdened individuals. Manasi is the girl, or any girl, and there is Mausi (Rohini Hattngadi) who also cue you to the issues that trouble Indrajit. When Indrajit responds: “I’m not Indrajit, I’m Nirmal,” the need to conform is established.

By the time the curtains came down on the Theatre Festival, one was left with the hope that an event such as this will be better organised in future and not display the orphaned appearance that this one had on the first two days.