Not quite a fair
ROMESH CHANDER
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The ongoing festival of plays put up by the participants of Sahitya Kala Parishad’s children’s theatre workshops is a disappointment.
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Miles to go The presentations leave much to be desired.
For the last 25 years, the Delhi Government’s Sahitya Kala Parishad has been organising children’s theatre workshops during the summer vacations.
This year’s workshops were held in 18 centres spread over the city with 40-50 children in each centre in the age group of six to 15 years.
By the time we go to the press, there would have been 14 plays spread over six evenings.
Scope for improvement
Unfortunately, I missed the short plays of the opening evening directed by Savita Verma and Madan Dogra. Of the remaining plays seen so far, most of them seemed rather disappointing and left much to be desired.
“Chamatkaron Ka Dhanda”, directed by Umesh Dikshit, is supposed to be an expose of tantriks and Godmen.
The story line is repetitive and after a time, the young audience loses interest.
Another play, “Chuk Chuk Gadi”, built around children’s toys and directed by Ramesh Khanna, held the young audience’s interest for the first few minutes before they started whispering to each other.
Obviously, the action and the lines did not hold their interest.
“Yeh Srishti Nirmata”, directed by Dhruv Kumar Tamta, was yet another play that failed to hold children’s interest primarily because the contents seemed to have been directly lifted from a classroom textbook without any attempt at dramatisation.
Drawing inspiration
“Malayang Ki Kuchi”, directed by Rohit Tripathi, draws not only the inspiration from Rekha Jain’s excellent play of the same title but more or less follows her storyline.
Rekha’s play has often been repeated on the Delhi stage and most theatre-goers are familiar with it. Of the plays that I have seen in the festival so far, “Malayang Ki Kuchi” is indeed the best production.
“Ramvir Ka Desh”, directed by Sushila Veruckar, that comments on the generation gap between parents and their children, was very disappointing, more so for the director is an ex-NSD student. It lacks even the basics of children’s theatre.
Though this year’s fare has not been up to the mark so far, there are a few more plays to feature in the ongoing festival.
So let us wait till the next week, hoping for better times.
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