Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Dec 13: Intimate and impactful performance of winter capital’s well-known writer Ramesh Mehta’s Hindi translation of Mahesh Elankunchwar’s original Marathi play ‘Visansi Jerani’, came as a welcome contrast from a lot of plays presented in the recently concluded Annual Theatre festival.
Directed by Mushtaq Kak, with Sandeep Verma as assistant director, today’s play was staged by Amateur Theatre Group (ATG) as a Unison Cultural Troupe presentation at the K.L. Saigal Hall, here today.
The play starts with ‘Baba’, the dying head of the family who is awaiting ‘Raghunath’ (God) to set him free. Each of his family members reveals the pretensions in familial relationships, their personal battles, complaints about each other including Baba, but whose voice nobody can hear. Slowly major truths about Baba’s life as well as other characters’ perception of each other are revealed. The play ends with the question of whether death can save the tattered and sour relationships?
The creative transformation of the limited space of the K.L. Saigal Hall with a central stage delineated by chairs lined up against the walls placed the audience in a distinctive position to savor an intimate experience of a today’s theatre performance.
The cast of young actors enacting without any support of stage lights, elaborate sets, successfully brought the complexities of the interpersonal relationship shared by a family, with aplomb through the sheer prowess of their acting skills, admirable control over speech and dialogue delivery.
With dying ‘Baba’ placed on the ‘stage’ at the end of the hall, rest of the rectangular floor space covered with black plastic sheets, actors clad in everyday costumes, moving with measured movements & steps, rising and ebbing emotions of dialogues, the sedate but disturbingly revealing soliloquies; sometimes achieving the intensity of an earnest whisper -today’s play was both a visual as well as an aural treat.
The participating actors were Mridul Raj Anand, Dr. Payal Arora, Bindiya Tikoo, Mehak Ali, Aayan Ali, and Aman Sangral. Mohit Singh chib was production manager and Harsh was Costume and property in charge.
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