A summer of drama

Theatre is most certainly a place for learning about the talent, imagination and glory of mankind, and witnessing it live is an experience in itself. Luckily, for many theatre enthusiasts in the city, the capital is bustling with several theatre activities this summer. One of them is The National School of Drama’s Summer Theatre Festival, staged by The National School of Drama Repertory Company.

With the staging of five crowd-pulling plays starting this Wednesday, Repertory chief Suresh Sharma says that the annual festival is a mixed bag of satire, earthy tales and politics. “These plays are like colophons; emblematic of what NSD stands for. We are opening with Chittaranjan Tripathy’s Taj Mahal Ka Tender, which two decades back had even won its writer both the Sahitya Kala Parishad and the Mohan Rakesh Samman. Its biting wit throws a powerful punch and remains, despite the passage of years, both relevant and well-loved. We have stuck with time-tested crowd pullers and are set to showcase our experimental works,” he reveals. The strand of realism runs strong with an attempt to lure Delhi audiences. Also, the temptation to stage a politically controversial play in the current climate has been included.

The Repertory Company is the regular performing wing of the school and was set up in 1964 with only four actors: Ramamurthy, Meena Williams, Sudha Shivpuri and Om Shivpuri. “With the dual purpose of establishing professional theatre on the one hand and continuing with regular experimental work on the other hand, we as a company, undertake performance tours to different parts of the country and abroad. The summer festival is our final performance before everyone heads out to enjoy their summer break,” Sharma says.

The plays — a mix of old and new productions — are a sort of best-of compilation of works by the Repertory Company. Besides Tripathy’s Taj Mahal Ka Tender and Tripurari Sharma’s Aadha Chand, the summer festival programme also includes NSD director professor Waman Kendre’s Ghazab Teri Adaa, Mohan Maharishi’s Vidyottama and Ghasiram Kotwal by Rajinder Nath.

Sharma points out that even in terms of story, plot and treatment, the five plays are different from each other. “Where Ghasiram Kotwal is not a historical play but has been cooked inside a historical kitchen with ingredients that are as much historical as they are contemporary, Vidyottama that’s set in 5th Century India shows how the glorious past interacts with the present plagued with chaos and violence through its female protagonist, wife of Kalidasa. She is not just a source of inspiration to her husband but is also his collaborator in his works of drama and poetry,” he says.

In terms of subject range, Sharma adds, there’s Ghazab Teri Adaa an original play written by Prof. Waman Kendre that has been inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. “It illustrates the anti-war thesis and women’s power and place in society. Kendre ji has produced a second version which imparts a new dimension to Lysistrata in terms of its pacifist message and presentational style. In the original, there are two choruses — the chorus of old men and the chorus of old women — representing dramatic conflict, exhorting the women to boycott their husbands in the matter of sex until the peace treaty is signed. In Kendre’s version, the chorus consists of the soldiers’ wives. The conflict is between the wives and the soldiers engaged in wars to annex territories of sovereign states at the behest of the king whose rapacious obsession to expand his kingdom intensifies with each victory. Ghazab Teri Adaa reflects an Indian ethos and situations.”

What can visitors expect “These plays are by the Repertory Company and are the face of NSD,” says Suresh. So viewers can expect to see plays that have been produced “seriously”, he concludes.