‘Revenge begets revenge’ — that was the undercurrent of the play ‘Chakravyuha’ staged on Wednesday by Chettinad Players, the theatre house of Chettinad Vidyashram.
On the massive mountainous stage set by veteran art director Thota Tharani, the play began with the snake sacrifice of Janamejaya, son of Parikshit, grandson of Abhimanyu and great grandson of Arjuna, to take revenge against the killing of his father by the snake ‘Takshaka’.
The play dealt with Abhimanyu’s heroic death in the chakravyuha, in Mahabharatha, Arjuna’s revenge and Janamejaya’s reconciliation to the truth.
S. Amudha Lakshmi, principal of Chettinad Vidyashram, said, “It has been nine years since we started this theatre group. We pick themes from Ramayana and Mahabharatha because our children should know stories from the epics.”
“In this play, we want children to realise that revenge is a vicious cycle; so they must learn to forgive and forget.” Some of the earlier productions of the group include ‘Karna’, ‘Vaali Vadham’, ‘Bheeshma’, ‘Kurukshetra’ and ‘Sundarakandam’.
The play was directed by J. Jayakumar and the script was written by Kumaravel and Deepika Kumaravel.
“If we introduce children to theatre early, they may do well in this field later. We are proud to say that some of our alumni are theatre professionals now,” said Meena Muthiah, secretary and correspondent of the school.
