18th Bharat Rang Mahotsav: Plays performed on Feb 3, 2016

Hi,

This is with reference to 18th Bharat Rang Mahotasav, please find attached synopsis and pics from Plays performed at the festival today (Feb 3, 2016) for your reference.

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LIST OF PLAY PERFORMED ON 3 February 2016

1. Armen Pather
2. Aranyagatha
3. Boma
4. Stories I Want To Tell You In Person

Play: Armen Pather

Playwright: Moti Lal Kemmu

Director: Ravi Kemmu

Group: ALG Cultural Society, Jammu

Language: Kashmiri

Duration: 2hrs 10mins

The Play

The play is about the vegetable growing community of the valley, called Arem. All the family members including men, women and children are involved with this profession traditionally. Today, there is scarcity of water, land is getting urbanized, forests are being cut, and wild animals are disappearing; thus creating ecological problems and un-employment for the people associated with this profession. The play Armen Pather deals will most of these problems. The play is presented in the folk Style of Bhand Pather where humour, music and dance are the main components and source of entertainment.

Director’s Note

The folk style play is a lost form on the repertoire of Bhands and I happened to see it when I was interacting with a group of Bhands at Kupwara. I requested Sh. Moti Lal kemmu to write it afresh. During the process of re-creating we took the liberty of using some songs related with the subject from Sufi poets like Nyama Sab, Shah Qalander and Ahmad Rah. The style is humorous and the performers are not from the traditional Bhand families. It is for the first time in the history that Non-Bhands are performing a Bhand Pather. All the participants have been trained during the workshop.

The Play: Aranyagatha

Playwright: Bhushan Bhatt

Director: Kanhaiya Lal Kaithwas

Group: Madhya Pradesh Natya Vidyalaya, Bhopal

Language: Hindi

Duration: 1 hr 25 mins

The Play

Man, Nature and Gods live together in the land of tales of Madhya Pradesh. Similarly the rivers, mountains, plants, animals and birds of Dindori district cry, sing and dance together with the Gods. Aranyagatha is based on Lord Shiva giving life to the clay idols of Baiga, Gond, Agariya and Pardhan. To expand the narrative there is a reference of Laxman, his love and his truth. Pandvani, Gondvani and Ramayani music and passages add colours to the presentation.

Director’s Note

In the Indian culture and tradition events do not hold much value in terms of space and time, but have a greater meaning associated with them. There are numerous characters which have unleashed themselves from the shackles of time and are now known as heroes and gods in folk and tribal songs and tales. The tribal groups do not necessarily have dance as its form but these heroes have always been alive in the verses of the local folk. Aranyagatha is probably one of the first efforts in this direction. This is a new experiment in theatre to bring the awareness of tribal culture to the masses.

Play: Boma

Playwright & Director: Bratya Basu

Group: Bratyajon, Kolkata

Language: Bengali

Duration: 2hrs 30mins

The Play

The play depicts the story of Bengal’s freedom movement (1908-1922). Influenced by the ideals of Aurabinda Ghosh, the members of Bengal Revolutionary Party, Barin Ghosh, Ullaskar Dutta, Hemchandra Kanungo, Upendranath Bandyopadhyay and several others, remain undeterred in their movement for freedom of the country. The failure of the bid to eliminate the sadistic magistrate Kingsford becomes a turning point for the English rulers, leading to the capture of the top leaders and causing disintegration of the revolutionaries.

Director’s Note

After a long while, a new promise was born, breaking through the dark to an elevated manifestation. Boma is placed at the commencement of the 20th Century – pre-independent India and Bengal’s revolution. We wanted to frame and use this production for picking up a few details out from the historical pile-up, of the massive revolutionary struggle of the pre-independent Bengal. Absence of adequate infrastructure, lack of long term planning, power struggle, futility of compassion and empathy — all these various aspects may be explored in a new dimension to make living worthwhile. All the characters in this play are real and historical except Kalpana. The play thus knits imagination with historical facts.

Play: Stories I Want To Tell You In Person

Playwright: Lally Katz

Director: Anne-Louise Sarks

Group: Belvoir St Theatre, Austrailia

Language: English

Duration: 1hr 20 mins

The Play & Director’s Note

On the one hand, Lally Katz has been writing the funniest and most original plays in the country for the last decade –Neighbourhood Watch, for example. On the other hand, Katz, Oscar Wilde-like, has been putting her genius into her life and only her talent into her work. Now the inevitable moment has come when the two must collide.

The thing is – and this is a true story – Katz was supposed to write us a play about a fortune teller. But she spent her commission (and then some) actually going to a fortune teller, in New York, more than once. This is the story of what Katz has been doing instead of writing a play. It features Katz, on her own, as herself, embroiled in a tale of art, love, money, shoes, and the apocalypse (of course).

Anyone who’s met her will know that the word ‘irrepressible’ has nothing on Katz, even at her quietest. She makes chaos charming and catastrophe positively exuberant. She likes to be laughed at, and her method is to talk first and think later. Anything could happen. Seriously. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. It’s Lally Katz!

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Warm Regards,

Anuj Kumar Boruah

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oung Monk Communications

M: +91 99583 72662

Email: anuj@youngmonk.in