Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Mar 18: Manoranjan Kala Kendra presented Punjabi drama ‘Usnoo Kahin’ on the second day of ongoing Annual Drama Festival, here today.
Written by well known Punjabi playwright Pali Bhupinder Singh and designed/directed by actor/director Tejinder Singh Premee, the play revolves around Aattu, a drummer, who during his youth had failed to play the drum to warn his friend Raja who was then killed by English soldiers. The guilt made him to abandon the drum for good and settle on outskirts of the village. His friend’s spirit regularly castigates him in dreams and he turns alcoholic.
Now after few decades, Rama, the village chowkidar, also friend of Aattu and Raja, comes to know that armed religious fanatics are going to kill innocent people of the village. Attu’s son Shera, is also part of the armed gang which assembles at his home and leave behind one Kanta before proceeding towards the village. Aattu’s daughter Guddo tells about Attu about the danger and he seeing an opportunity to absolve him of the past sin, beats the drum to forewarn villagers. But Kanta throws him down from the height and Attu dies.
The powerful script and dialogues portraying the religious fanaticism during Punjab militancy provided a very good take off to the today production which was marked by intelligent use of props by the actors.
Pandit Makhan Shashtri as Attu, Sushmita Banerjee as Gudo, Tejinder Singh Premee as Rama, Kamal Sharma as Kanta, Vijay Sharma as Shera and Sidharth Sharma as Raj’s spirit gave good performances. Other members of the cast included Dr Rajinder Thapa as Baba, Mukesh as Jaggi, Gurcharan Singh as Gama and Shubam Banerjee as Rattu.
The sets were designed by Vijay Sharma, M L Sharma, Dr R Thapa and Shubam Banerjee, lights by Kumar A Bharti, Ajay Sharma, music by Bhupinder Singh, and costumes by Prakash Kour. Prof Kiran Bakshi, Principal, GWC, Parade, was the chief guest on the occasion.
On the third of the annual drama fest organized by Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, Nav Durga Kala Manch, under the direction of Aditya Bhanu, is going to present Manoj Mitra’s Hindi play Raj Darshan.
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