Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Mar 1: Mirroring successfully the exploitation of women in terms of social paradigms that have kept her subservient in patriarchal social set up, the maiden performance of play in Hindustani ‘Alakh Aazadi Ki’ was staged by Rangabha Theatre Group, at the GCW, Gandhi Nagar Auditorium, here today.
The experimental production, conceived, directed by Rakesh Singh, NSD alumni, and native of Gagwal, Jammu, has been financed by Ministry of Culture, New Delhi.
The play, an amalgam of three plays scripts, revolved around painful lives of three female protagonists such as Gandhari of Mahabharata, the 1880s women activist and writer of Simantani Updesh and modern women as three characters; Draupadi, Benare Bai and Savitri. The only male character of the play appears as Krishna as well as sutradhars-the narrator.
The play underlines how the individual egos of women are turned into social beings by being made to internalize her role through ‘the family’, set of values, norms, expectations and ideologies of society as a whole. Be it Gandhari, whose blindfolding her eyes as mark of protest against her marriage to a blind man, was eulogized by everyone around as a great gesture of a ‘pativrata’ women, or fate of hapless Drapuadi, or Banare Bai or Savitri who have audacity to question the very role of men as masters.
Highlight of play was its intelligent design which linked the apparently historically removed characters through the sameness of their shared fates of exploitation in respective social set-up.
The cast of four actors who gave a powerful and captivating performance included Nidhi Mishra as Draupadi, Benare Bai and Savitri and Pushpa Vishvakarma as Maa Bhagwati Bai-the NSD graduates from out of the State while Esha Taggar as Gandhari and Avnish Sharma as Krishna were local talents.
Today’s production using minimal sets and props evolved like a symphony. The light and music design also effectively brought in focus emotive situations without any ostentation of special effects. The live violin play by Rohit Verma was an ingenious device to replace the conventional light fade-outs to facilitate the changeover of one sequence to another.
Backstage team included Kuldeep Kumar Mehra, Sets, Devashish, lights, Gagan, music, Vijay Goswami, music operation, Kriti V Sahrma, costumes, Manoj Bhat, props and Rohit Bians, choreography.
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