We’ve known him as Shakaal, the international crimelord of Shaan. Then we saw him as Inder, the man who walks out on his wife in Arth. Later, in Deepa Mehta’s Fire, he appeared as Ashok, a married man determined to stamp out all desire and lead a monastic life. Now, at 68, Kulbhushan Kharbanda is trying out something he hasn’t attempted in over 20 years. Some months ago he returned to theatre with Atmakatha (Autobiography), a Hindi play by Kolkata-based theatre group Padatik of which Kharbanda is a founder.
Yesterday, it was with Atmakatha, an adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Marathi classic, that National School of Drama (NSD) opened its 15th annual theatre festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsav. Since it first started in 1999, the 15-day festival has brought to the audience 1,200 plays from across India and the world. This year, it comes with 87 productions.
It’s no big surprise that legendary story-teller Saadat Hasan Manto will be here in good measure. His birth centenary last year had bought him and his stories back into focus, and a good thing too. But it’s the range of styles in the six productions dedicated to Manto that will be worth watching out for. The country’s original contemporary dastangos (story-tellers), Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain, will perform Mantoiyat in the lost art form of Urdu storytelling. Also staged will be Manto’s chilling stories Khol Do aur Mozel that bring out the horror and emotional complexities of Partition like nothing else does. There will also be two productions from Pakistan — Mantorama and Kaun Hai Yeh Gustakh.
NSD didn’t plan these plays around Manto. It just so happened that several theatre artists around the country were working on Manto and his plays. The entries that came to NSD called for a special section — ‘Manto Focus’. The same happened with Shakespeare who remains timeless and continues to be revisited and reinvented in various geographical and cultural contexts. So, there’ll be seven productions around the playwright — Lear, a solo performance from Turkmenistan; Julius Caesar in an Assamese adaptation; The Footsbarn Theatre’s Indian Tempest (an example of physical theatre); and The Knocking Within, a fascinating non-verbal piece that draws on Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus and inspired by Capoeira, Kalaripayattu, Bharata Natyam, West African dance, and various other contemporary dance forms. The only three-hour word for word interpretation of the original text comes from Koushik Sen’s Macbeth in Bengali.
This time round, the NSD festival also draws attention to popular theatre, or regional theatre, which remains an attraction in towns and villages and remains commercially-viably against the odds. Five commercial theatre companies from across India will perform in this category.
Bharat Rang Mohatsav will also feature 18 international performances, with three countries — Azerbaijan, Taiwan and Hungary — participating for the first time. Seven of these are from the Saarc countries which throw light on the happenings and conflicts in the world around us. Among these will be Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s award-winning theatrical production Dhawala Bheeshana from Sri Lanka which is based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s renowned play Men Without Shadows. Then there is A Warsaw Melody, a tragic love story from China. From Afghanistan, there is Dario Fo’s The Tale of A Tiger which draws from the Chinese folk tale about a wounded soldier who is healed by a tigress.
Two exhibitions — ‘Celebrating a Decade: 2002-2012’ and, ‘Popular Theatre’ — are also part of the festival. Besides this, there will be interactions with directors and, among other things, installation theatre projects which do not strictly fall in the realm of theatre. Like, Pagadi, which is based on the elaborate tradition, and often every-day ritual, of turbans in India. This comes integrated with elements of theatre, dance, music and design.
There will also be offsite projects, such as ‘Parallel Cities’ which looks at public spaces like shopping malls, libraries and campuses, as theatre.
NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav is on till January 20. Tickets priced at Rs 200, Rs 100 and Rs 50. For inquiries, call 011-23073647, 011-23387137 or visit www.nsdtheatrefest.com
