13th Jashne Bachpan at National School of Drama on 18th November, 2016 for your reference.
- Lal Paan ki Begum (fresh pics attached)
- Basanta Eshe Gyachhe (file pics attached)
Lal Paan ki Begum
Director: Javed Ibrahim
Group: Raft Theatre, Delhi
Language: Hindi
Duration: 50 mins
About the Group
Raft was established in 2004 to promote theatre in villages, raise social issues and bring to the audience different life-situations and facts. To fulfil these, social problems have been put forth through street plays. So far Population, Education, Unemployment, Environment, Girl Child and Unity-in-Diversity have been the main topics. Workshops and skits have been organised in backward areas as well. The group has given many stage performances including Idgah, Dhoop ka Ek Tukda, Chekov Ki Kahaniyan, Court Martial, Lal Paan Ki Begum etc.
About the Play
Lal Paan ki Begum is one of the most popular stories by Phanishwar Nath Renu. It represents the frustration of someone whose behaviour is dependent on the fulfilment of his/her desires. Birju’s mother wants to go and watch ‘Balrampur ka naach’ but her husband doesn’t return home in time to take her. She beats up her kids and goats, and fights with every woman she meets in the village. Seeing her husband returning in the bullock-cart she calms down and her behaviour changes into that of queen. She takes the women of the village along with her, especially those she had fought with, for the ‘naach’. On reaching Balrampur everyone celebrates the occasion with song and dance.
Director
Javed Ibrahim was born on 10th March 1986 in Delhi. He began his journey of theatre while studying at Dr. Zakir Hussain College. Later he studied at the Sri Ram Centre and then at the Department of Indian Theatre. After completing his education he worked as an actor in SRC Repertory & NSD Repertory. For 3 years he was a visiting faculty at Jamia University. He has directed plays for many schools. These include Mera Bachpan, Gilli Danda, Panch Parmeshwar, Pareeksha etc. He has worked with renowned theatre directors like Neelam Mansingh, Dr. Mahendra, Dr. Danish Iqbal, Rajendra Nath, Ranjit Kapur, Devendra Raj Ankur etc. He has acted in plays like The Tempest, Chekov ki Duniya, Adamzaad, Panchlet, Trojan Woman and many more.
Director’s Note
Lal Paan Ki Begum looks into the real life situation where even a small unfulfilled desire leads to frustration and baseless anger on anyone and everyone around. No one matters at that point in time. A similar situation arises in life of Birju’s mother. What she does out of frustration is very amusing. Through this story Renu creates an interesting environment of a village and its people. It is a unique story and I love the happy ending where the villagers finally drown in songs and dance.
Basanta Eshe Gyachhe
Director: Raja Bhattacharya
Group: Blank Verse, West Bengal
Language: Bengali
Duration: 1 hr 15 mins
About the Group
Blank Verse has taken a mission to light lamps of moral awakening in today’s world of raging terrorism, planned massacre, bloodshed & irresponsible leadership. Its major productions are Furrut, Kanaichand Palowan, Bhootum, Bhagaban, Aal Izz Well, E=mc², The Great New Life,
Barnaparichay, Basanta Eshe Gyachhe etc. and the attributed authors are Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury, Rabindranath Tagore, William Shakespeare, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Sukumar Ray, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Badal Sircar etc. The group has participated in the 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav of National School of Drama, Jashn-e-Bachpan of NSD (2006, ’08, ’09 & ’10), Odeon (2006, ’09 & ’11), Vishvabharati Theatre Festival, Nandikar’s NTF’06, Natyamel’06 & ’11 by Govt. of WB and so on. It has done 6 major productions and 3 workshop productions. It gives regular training to elders, and has a weekly theatre activity club Chhutti for children.
About the Play
The Playmaster is narrating a story of the Reverie-Land where some hungry students come on a school tour and a magic spell forces them to do behave in a ridiculous manner. The king of the Reverie-Land tries to spread his charm through his apprentice, Potash, who squeezes the passion-flower on the boys creating all the comedy and errors. Meanwhile, the king makes the clown a donkey, and charms his queen to marry it. But when the magic spell is over, the disillusioned queen understands her folly. The school kids also get disillusioned. Finally, all live happily ever after… except the clown. He is not able to get out of the charm. Being ‘an ass’, he still wants to rule the Reverie-Land. The fellow actors take him back, leaving the audience wondering if the clown and we live simultaneously in the real world.
Director
An honours graduate in English from the University of Calcutta, Raja has bagged the Junior
Scholarship for 2002-04, and also the Junior Fellowship in 2010, both from the Ministry of
Culture, Govt. of India. Workshops of SRPA, run with the discipline of J. Grotowski and a six-month acting training at Nandikar enriched him as an actor. He has also taken body-language and acting classes from H. Kanhailal, Savitri Heisnam and Usha Ganguly. Having formed Blank Verse in 2006, he has participated in Jashn-e-Bachpan & BRM (by NSD) five times with different productions. In 2014, he was selected in ‘Acting Shakespeare’ workshop, conducted by Tim Supple, at Adishakti. As an invited director he directed a multilingual musical, Laxman Ka Shaktishel with the TIE Students of NSD at Agartala, Tripura. Besides writing fictions & plays for Anand Bazar Patrika, Rangapat Natyapatra, SAS etc. and acting in films, Raja has chosen theatre as his career and presently, is the faculty of drama in South Point School, Kolkata.
Director’s Note
I think children are the most essential part of our society. But they always live under restrictions. Shakespeare in their syllabus distances them from the Indian folk culture which has a major role in creating our history and transforming our sociology. So, being a parallel education process, as we firmly believe it is, our theatre takes the responsibility to open an avenue of learning through entertainment. Shakespeare, here, is introduced to children through minstrelsy, movement, drollery, melody & mirth. Simultaneously, the play connects certain folk forms to find a new & fresh language for Bengali Children’s Theatre. It helps discover and develop a new musical orientation of theatre through folk arts, incorporating Shakespeare. And this process helps not only children, but also their elder counterparts to move towards creativity.
Warm Regards,
Anuj
M: +91 99583 72662
M: +91 99583 72662
Shakti Raj Vidyarthi
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