Excelsior Correspondent
POONCH, Aug 13: Natrang show series in Poonch district concluded with the staging of play ‘Soch’ directed by Rahul Singh at Balnoi village of Mendhar Tehsil today. Aimed at educating the rural folk about their burning problems, this series featured 12 shows of three plays, two of them were written and directed by Padamshree Balwant Thakur.
The presentation of these shows was supported by Indian Army and was attended largely by local population and school children. Most of the people of this remotest part of the State witnessed the theatre happening for the first time in their life.
Compared with other mediums of communication like electronic and print media, the effective theatre engages the audiences in totality and thus makes them the torch bearers of the highly educative messages conveyed to them through the electrifying performances of professional actors. Giving details about this show series, Natrang Director Balwant Thakur informed that while scripting these plays lot of research went into this work to create characters and situations which directly relate to the local conditions, their linguistic idioms and cultural beliefs. At each performance venue these plays were not alien to them but on the contrary audience was surprised to see that how come Natrang knows the problems they are confronting.
The last show was at village Balnoi which is on LOC and interestingly the power-packed sound emerging out of these intense performances was echoing across boundaries.
The plays which featured in this 12 show series included ‘Suno Eh Kahani’ which propagated the theme of ‘Beti Bachaao Beti Padhao’ and women empowerment in a highly entertaining manner. Using varied traditional performing modes, the play being lyrical and rooted in the cultural soil and flavour of Pahari/Gojri region was highly engrossing and captivating which effectively educated the masses about gender equality, women education and empowerment. The play ‘Choona Hai Aasmaan’ revolved around a young man who aspired to excel and achieve. It was shown that his aspiration of scaling new heights and touching the skies could only be achieved when there are no disturbances, no chaos, no space for hatred for each other but an inspiring peaceful environment which encourages every-one to aspire and achieve. The play ‘Soch’ unfolds before us many situations where all our follies which are responsible for the unhygienic atmosphere around us.
The artists who participated in the shows included Neeraj Kant, Mohd. Yaseen, Rahul Singh, Juhi Singh, Shivam Singh, Ankush Lakhnotra, Rajan Thakyal, Mahikshit Singh, Piyush Anand, Rishav Sharma, Sudesh Parihar and Meenakshi Bhagat.
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