Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Feb 3: Staged on third day of ongoing NIFT 2020, the international theater festival, being organized by Nutan Prayas Manch, ‘Court Martial’, the hard hitting play highlighted deeply ingrained social prejudice of casteism in Indian society. Despite the Right to Equality as one of the fundamental rights given under article 14 of Indian Constitution, this vile discrimination on the basis of cast continues.
One of the most performed and widely translated contemporary plays, Swadesh Deepak’s ‘Court Martial’was staged by Sukhmanch, Delhi, at the Abhinav Theatre, here today,
The main plot of the story revolves around the Court Martial of a soldier named Ram Chandar who is accused of killing one of his senior officers and gravely injuring another. Col. Surat Singh, the presiding officer is stunned by the ugly and shocking truth revealed due to skills of the sharp defense lawyer. While bringing forth the fact that Indian army is the only government agency in which reservation on caste basis is not permissible, the play ends with a combination of legal and poetic justice.
Today’s 90 minute riveting performance completely engrossed the audience who intermittently broke the pin drop silence by spontaneous applause. The pace of unfolding of events was enlivened by brilliant acting by the entire cast in successfully re-creating the gestures, disciplined body movements and specific character traits of army personals. The timing and energy of the fast and flawless delivery of dialogues, highs and lows in the pitch, pregnant pauses, interspersed with subtle humor, proved to be the mainstay of today’s performance.
Shilpa Marwah, the director, not only successfully designed a captivating production, but also showed her acting mettle in the role of the defense lawyer. The other actors who equally impressed were Soumyabrata Bhattacahrya, Deepant Kandoi, Zeshan Khjan, Rahul Singh, Santosh Aggarwal, Dipesh Rohilla, Gaurav Dubey, Ravindra Shashtri, Anant Raj Singh and others.
Tomorrow, the fourth production of the ongoing NIFT 2020-which can aptly be labeled as the festival of representative classical plays of modern Indian theatre-will be Dharamveer Bharti’s Andhayug by Taam Manipur under direction of Joy Maisnaam.
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