Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Mar 11: Shivani Cultural Society presented ‘The Last Séance’ as seventh play of the ongoing annual drama festival organized by J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, at auditorium of Government College for Women, Gandhi Nagar, here today.
Written and directed by Vikram Sharma, the play in which Sharad Chander’s classic characters, Devdas, Paro and Chandramukhi, immortalized in his novel Devdas, come alive and question the very way they were conceived by the author and made to live respective destinies marked with a streak of tragedy.
Taking up certain well known sequences that have been famously performed in film and drama productions and stand attached on the minds of people, the play showcases trauma of characters who feel helpless and suffocated under control of the writer. The writer who also appears on stage and tries to justify the choices he made, is branded by his characters as escapist and coward and called in witness box and cross questioned. Finally they declare that they are comfortable in present world where they ‘can live freely’ after death.
Today’s performance was marked by an obvious emphasis on aesthetic design of colorful lights to emphasize the range of emotion from ‘rati’ to ‘virha’. The use of songs and dance sequences, continuous use of alcohol by Devdas, was a ploy to allude to the atmosphere of feudal ways of entertainment, in which the original novel was set in.
The character of Devdas was enacted by Raj Bhagat, Paro by Neha Raj Dabia, Chandramukhi by Vandana Hans and Anila Devi/Sutradhar by Ashish Zadoo. The set was designed by Shalini, lights by Dr Amit Gupta, music by Himanshu Darshan and costumes by Farhan Ahmed.
Tomorrow Rang Shalla is going to perform Jyant Dalvi’s play Sandhya Shaya under the direction of Umesh Singh.
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