5 PLAYS PERFORMED TODAY DURING NATIONAL SCHOOL OF DRAMA’S 19^th EDITION OF BHARAT RANG MAHOTSAV

New Delhi, 8^th February, 2017: Today during the 19^th edition of National School of Drama’s International Drama Festival Bharat Rang Mahotsav 2017, 5 Plays were performed including Rajkumar Raikwar’s hindi play Panchali ki Shapath, Amitava Dutta’s bengali play Tomar Ami, Dharmik Pandya’s gujarati play Mannbhat Aakhyan, Aditi Desai’s gujarati play Samundramanthan, and S I Samarakkodi’s non-verbal play of University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Sri Lanka – Love & Life. All the plays were well appreciated by students, theatre aficionados, litterateurs and theatre lovers. As part of Advitiya 2017, 3 teams from various Institutes & Colleges out of the total 53 enacted Street Plays at NSD Lawns under Ambience Performance.

Today, during the Meet the Director – face to face at National School of Drama, renowned theatre personality Sunil Shanbag, Director ofLoretta explained about why he chose 1970’s as the backdrop for his play “70’s was the period of many faces for example the hippie movement and many other around the world but I wanted to look at 1970’s more objectively and present a Goan point of view because of the revolution taking place in terms of theatre in that period. We don’t have much about Goa in the history of theatre even though it had a strong identity at that time.”

Shyamal Chakraborty, Director of Shekal Chhenra Hater Khonjie commented “the production process took more than 2 years in this time we gave an extensive thought to the relevance of the content and how can we communicate and exchange our views on the leftist politics at that time to the audience in an easier way.” D. Elumalai, Director of Draupadi Vasthirabaranam on the choice of open space for the performance he said “the style of Proscenium theatre is more prevalent in southern parts of India that’s why we choose open spaces for our performances and because the audience is more interactive in that region, it is just not a play there it a religious and a cultural celebration back in Tamil Nadu.” Y. Sadananda Singh, Director of Love Your Nature answered on why he chose this particular art form and how did he prepare for it said “I love the non-verbal form of theater I find it very communicative even without language, but the process is not easy as it seems, it took around 5 years for the preparation for this play and the actors went through vigorous training for body movements and facial expressions.”

Debora Merola, the Nepali Director of Anna In The Tropics on the question on the multiculturalism and difficulties faced from it she said “I as an American who lives in California find multiculturalism very interesting and homely because of the strong Latino presence there. I think we theatre artists are courageous and fool hardy and not afraid to improvise, if I was afraid of difficulties I wouldn’t be in theater.”

Katha Workshop Series in Performance & Craft of 19^th Bharat Rang Mahotsav today had its 5^th workshop on Keerthan. It was participated by its experts Mr. Charu Datta Aphale, Mr. Vijay Upadhye, Mr. Manoj Bhandwalkar. Marathi Kirtan is spiritual teaching through story-telling. It is typically performed by a main performer, the Kirtankar with musicians accompanying on tabla and harmonium. Incorporating singing, dancing, and story-telling it is the glorification of God. There are different types of Kirtans such as the Naradiya, Rashtriya, Varkari, etc. Usually a core text, an abhang, is interlaced with other scripted material, such as songs of saints, and also with improvised verse, all alternating between song, narrative, storytelling and humour. The Kirtan essentially has two parts - The Purvaranga, as the Natyashastra explains, is the prelude where the performer introduces a religious or philosophical problem. In the Uttararanga, which follows, the performer expands and elaborates, and illustrates his answer through a story. The first part displays the erudition of the performer and the second his dramatic talent. The performance begins with prayers to different deities and concludes again with prayers and an Arti.