Looking back at the Prithvi Festival

November 19, 2006 | Filed Under Theatre & Movies 

Today is the last day of Prithvi festival. I am not seeing any plays today so for me the festival is over. The theme of this year’s festival was – Theatre in service of the nation. Performances were held at various venues – Prithvi, Taj Land’s End, Yeshwantrao Chavan Natyagraha, and Horniman Circle. Apart from the regular plays and performances held inside the theatre, there were some held outside too. I saw six plays in all and three platform performances.
In chronological order:

1. Raj-Rakt - (Dir – Habib Tanvir, Story – Tagore)

Subject – Politics of Sacrifice (animal and human)

2. Unsuni – (Darpana Productions (Mallika Sarabhai), www.unsuni.net)

Subject – People whose lives are muffled by the society we live in. Some of the people discussed were – street children, people carrying excreta on their head, people classified as untouchables, farmers whose lands have been taken away from them, lepers, riot victims….

3. Kashinama – (A theatre group from Varanasi)

Subject – The effects of globalization in a place like Kashi and its effect on the concept of God.

4. Butter and Mashed Bananas – (Harami theatre, playwright – Ajay Krishnan)

Subject – The hypocrisy that exists in today’s society.

5. Shambukh Vadh (Jana Natya Manch)

Subject – The concept and treatment of Shudhras in today’s society

6. Hidden Fires (Jayant Kriplani’s troupe, writer – Manjula Padmanabhan)

Subject – Riot victims

I also saw 3 platform performances -

1. Suanand Kirkire (I hope i got the name right), the lyricist of Parineeta, lagey raho…, some songs of hazaaron khwaishein aisi…. sang a few of his songs along with his troupe. He is a great singer as well and an aspiring director too. Suanand sang – Raat hamari to, chaand ki saheli hai, which is one of my favorite songs, so i was quite happy.

2. Naseeruddin Shah reading Vikram Seth’s poetry. I didn’t think the poetry was extra-ordinary and was quite disappointed. Naseer sahab emoted quite well but I just couldn’t concentrate, it turned out to be quite boring eventually.

3. Salim Arif reading Faiz’s poems. I really enjoyed this even with the limited knowledge of Urdu that I have. The performance culminated with we getting to hear a Faiz’s poem turned into a song recorded by Iqbal Bano, a pakistani singer. The song was called Hum Dekhenge and the voices was extremely silky. It was quite mesmerizing. I found a video of the song online, here it is -
Video of Iqbal Bano singing – Hum Dekhenge

The Festival in long hand

The worst of the lot – Hidden Fires. It seemed like a play that almost put in no creative effort. Rehan Engineer read 1000 names on the stage saying that names of riot victims are never told and this is in memory of them. The psychotorture was so extreme that I felt it could be used on spies and extreme criminals. Rehan was also emoting with a heavy voice and teary eyes. I did not see where his pain was coming from. No one likes a riot and it seemed that the people who were watching the performance were the once who were responsible for all the riots and hence this torture for them. So u basically buy tickets for a play and you get tortured. What has the connoiseur’s of art (even if many of us are just yuppies) done to deserve this. When Mandira Bedi did here thing, I was as bored as i used to be in college while attending lectures. For the first time I respected those who had the guts to walk out. The only respite was a performance by a guy whose name I don’t even remember, he may not have been a diamond but atleast he shone like glass in the sand.
Now that the worst is behind us, lets move on to another performance which was on the verge of being preachy. Mallika Sarabhai’s ‘Unsuni’. Though it talked about a few things that one may not know it was more theme and less theatre. Names like Mallika Sarabhai and Jayant Kriplani seriously disappointed in the festival. I am wondering if Sanjana Kapoor trusted these names like I did and let them perform.

A poet is a pauper at worst and a communist at best, this is the thought I had when the poems of Faiz were being read out. The poet’s love for his motherland, is more about love for fellowmen and not the concept of a nation. It reminded me of Abou Ben Adhem. It’s things like these that want me to be a better person, coz there is the additional promise of meeting souls like Faiz and Safdar Hashmi there. After the poetry reading I saw the play by Jana Natya Manch – Shambhuk Vadh. It’s play that deserves to be seen by people who study art as it’s a beautifully disguised and yet in your face. The play is about an incident in Ramayana. Shambhukh was killed by Ram and a dead Brahmin got his life back. The play talked about Ram rajya – where everyone has equal rights, no one is discriminated against. And yet when brahmins kill the shudras, ram does not take any notice. Only when the shudras retaliated, does Ram get angry… It’s beautifully old and amazingly now.

Safdar Hashmi died really young, I wish he was not assasinated. He was killed on the stage, what a way to be a martyr.

Raj Rakt was the first play of the festival, and I have already talked about it in my previous posts. It is always a joy to see Habib Tanvir and his performers from Chattisgarh.

Kashinama – undoubtebly one of the best plays in the festival. I loved the actors, they were so real. The great part about being in theatre is that you can satisfy your voyeuristic side. In Kashinama, you are transported right inside a house in kashi. You see their little and big struggles, you empathize with them, you fall in love with them. You find that these simple GOd-loving people are faced with questions that they don’t even what to prop up in the first place. For someone like me who has totally different views, the play does a good job of respecting where they come from and accept it’s a big deal for them. There are two scenes of dreams of two characters, i think they are brilliant. The play can be a play to be studied by art students. I Love Sanjana Kapoor for getting this troupe to Bombay.

And finally, the group that was the dark horse – Harami Theatre.

When I booked tickets for Butter and Mashed Bananas, about two weeks before the festival started, I took tickets for this one purely coz i like the name of the group. I didn’t know that the play had won at Thespo, i got to know that only after I saw the play and I googled for them. The play starts with a guitarist strumming in the background and one guy singing. The song itself wasn’t bad at all. Three seemingly young guys on the stage of Prithvi and that too in the Prithvi Festival… I wonder if they were awed by just being there. But if they were, they didn’t show that the occasion had given them any nerves. The play was interestingly abstract. A novel story that leads from one issue to another so easily that one would think one is travelling on a hovercraft. The leftist and rightist interestingly put on ghungroos on their left and right legs respectively. The novel Phbot and many such abstract imagery, with the singing and dancing totally absorb you in the play. This group should try interpreting Waiting for Godot in an Indian setting. I am confident they will do a good job. Definitely the best play that I saw at prithvi festival this year. (I missed a couple of good plays so I can’t declare it as THE BEST.) Hoping that this group does not disappear into oblivion like a lot of other new but talented groups.

The only complain I had with the characters is that they didn’t wait to soak in the moment, after the play was over. The audience almost gave a standing ovation to an empty stage. Ideally, in such cases, one should come on stage and introduce the artists and the technicians. How else will people know you and remember you?

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