GUWAHATI:A five-day annual theatre extravaganza ‘Brajanath Sharma Memorial Drama Festival’, a major highlight of Assam’s cultural calendar, begins here from September 11 showcasing a play each day.
The ninth edition of the festival, organised by amateur theatre group Samahar Natya Gosthee, will be held at Rabindra Bhawan here with the inaugural play being Shombhu Mitra’s “Kanchan Ranga”, staged by Nagaon-based group ‘Natyam’ and directed by Anjan Bhuyan, Festival President Mr Lalit Sarma told reporters here today. The play reflects deteriorating human values and peoples’ greed for a materialistic world at the cost of sacrificing basic human emotions.
Another highlight of the festival is Samahar’s staging of the play ‘Jugasandhi’ written and directed by noted theatre personality Dr Sitanath Lahkar.
The play showcases Assam’s rich folk tradition ‘Ojapali’, which is gradually fading into oblivion, threatened by the onslaught of modern culture as represented by Rock music in the play.
The musical ends with a clarion call to ensure Ojapali’s survival and continuity with the Rock band accepting the inherent beauty of the folk tradition. Another play ‘Sincha Panir Maas’, by Naat theatre group and directed by Manash Protim Neog, probes the complexities in politics and society against the backdrop of the theft of a scooter of a female journalist and the incidents following till its recovery.
Another group ‘Natmandal’ will present a satirical play “Sunaha Bishnu Rabha Sangbad”, written and directed by Nitul Kumar Medhi, which highlights ‘extortion’ carried out by a section of people to observe a day in the name of Assam’s prominent cultural personality Bishnu Rabha.
The curtain of the festival will come down on September 15 with the play ‘Shakira Ahibo Bakul Talar Bihuloi’ by the theatre group Guernica highlighting the clash of priorities among villagers.
The play shows a group of youths planning to organise a Bihu function in their village by inviting a ‘star’ singer and finally deciding on international singer, dancer and choreographer Shakira, while another group is working hard to raise money to repair the embankment breached during the latest wave of flood.
”During the last nine years, this festival has become a landmark cultural event of the state.
“Now, it is a big responsibility on our shoulder to make it a grand success every year”, the President of the Festival said.
The festival is held in the memory of Brajanath Sharma considered as the father of Assamese mobile theatre who had first brought women on the stage to introduce co-acting in the state in 1933. Sharma, also a firebrand freedom fighter, had destroyed and set ablaze the British aerodrome at Bornagar, Sarbhog police station and a post office in Barpeta district.
The inaugural lamp will be lit by Brajanath Sharma’s daughter Nirmala Mishra and granddaughter Neelakshi Mishra Sharma.
The festival will be inaugurated by scholar and social scientist Hiren Gohain. Each day’s play will be followed by an interaction between the playwright and director with the audience.
