Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 6: Rangshala Theatre Group of Society, Jammu with the financial assistance from Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi staged Grish Karnad’s Hindi play ‘Hayavadana’ under the direction of Umesh Singh in Performing Art Studio, Jammu.
The play was prepared in 30 days long theatre workshop organized by Rangshala Sansthan. Hayavadana is one of Karnad’s most remarkable works. The plot of Hayavadana comes from Kathasaritsagara, an ancient compilation of stories in Sanskrit.
The central event in the play-the story of Devadatta and Kapila- is based on a tale from the Vetalapanchavimshika, but he has borrowed it through Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in The Transported Heads.
The Sanskrit tale, told by a ghost to an adventurous king, gains a further mock –heroic dimension in Mann’s version. The original story poses a moral problem whereas Mann uses it to ridicule the mechanical notion of life which differentiates between body and soul. He ridicules the philosophy which holds the head superior to the body.
The human body, Mann argues, is a device for the completion of human destiny. Even the transposition of heads did not liberate the protagonists from the psychological limits imposed by nature. Karnad’s play poses a different problem, that of human identity in a world of tangled relationships.
Artists who acted in the play were Hassan Malik, Umar Qureshi, Satish Vidrohi, Ashish Dhar, Devanshu Raina, Anoop Goswami, Mousami Thakyal, Shweta Jamwal, Irfana Bano, Gautam Singh, Tarun, Nikhil Singh, Nisha Bhatti, Nikhil and many others.
Overall production incharge was Mohd Yasir, Costumes were designed by Sunita K Thakur, Make-up by Nikita while props by Siddharth Singh.
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