This year’s edition of the Prithvi Festival, which runs till November 13, promises almost an entire fortnight of theatre bookended by classical music acts of both esteem and rigour. Being anointed the festival’s opening play has been a coveted distinction — Abhishek Majumdar’s Kaumudi and Naseeruddin Shah’s Riding Madly Off In all Directions have been inaugural acts in recent years. This year, rather than a play, but no less emotive, the strong earthy voices of the Nooran Sisters of Jalandhar will flag off the revelry, while the closing performance is a new programme from the Symphony Orchestra of India (or SOI). The singing duo — Sultana and Jyoti Nooran — come from the musical lineage of the well-known Sufiyana Qalam singer Bibi Nooran, their great-grandmother. They pledge allegiance to the Sham Chaurasi gharana of Hindustani classical music, under which has evolved a tradition of impassioned vocal duets or jugalbandis over more than four centuries. The past few years have seen the Nooran Sisters steadily rise in stature, forging a presence in both cinema and television, and they can be expected to pull off an acoustically rich performance in the intimate unplugged environs of Prithvi Theatre.
The SOI, of course, is now a regular feature at the venue. In 2013, the ensemble presented the first ever performance of Western classical music at the Prithvi Festival, and at the festival’s next edition, a monthly concert series got off the ground, quite gratifyingly for music connoisseurs in the suburbs. Scheduled for the second Monday of each month, SOI@Prithvi showcases an eclectic chamber music repertoire featuring some exceptional artistes. This year, Russian virtuoso Evgeny Bushkov took over as the chamber orchestra’s resident conductor, and its closing act, intriguingly titled Baroque Meets The Beatles, intersperses works by masters of the Baroque period — Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel — with selections from Peter Breiner’s album Beatles go Baroque , in which pop numbers were re-imagined in the style of these baroque masters. After the premiere performance at Prithvi, the act will be reprised the next day, at the NCPA’s Experimental Theatre, the orchestra’s home.
Another popular Prithvi initiative, earmarked for the third Sunday of each month, is Pancham Nishad’s Udayswar@Prithvi, a monthly concert of morning raagas most amenable to those accustomed to an early start to their day. During the festival, the young Dhrupad vocalist Pelva Naik, one of the very few women exponents in the field, will hold forth with her rich melodies accompanied by Sanjay Agle on the pakhawaj. These inroads into the world of classical music, for a venue whose mainstay has always been theatre, are diversification measures that attempt to draw in new audiences from the legions of music lovers.
Competing for footfalls over the coming week and a half, will be six premiering productions. This is a modest figure given the festival’s antecedents, but opening and running a new production is a different ball game altogether these days, and while a first show at Prithvi is still a matter of some prestige, it doesn’t guarantee a subsequent run of viable proportions. It is left to the regulars to shore up this section of the itinerary. As is now de rigueur, Makrand Deshpande will open his new production, Spot On . A meditation on a picketing scientist, it will be performed in both Marathi and Hindi in back-to-back shows. Another fan favourite will hold sway in an hour-long show quite self-explanatorily (and self-referentially) titled Naseeruddin Shah Reads Aloud His Favourite Poems , while Rage Productions will open an intense psychological drama set in a women's prison called Iron , directed by Arghya Lahiri. Written by Scottish writer Rona Munro, the play was first performed at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in 2002, and starts with the first visit by 25-year-old Josie to her mother, Fay, who has served 15 years of a life sentence for killing Josie's father.
A collaborative partnership that was born in the previous edition was that of director Akarsh Khurana and writer Adhir Bhat with the troupers of D for Drama. Last year’s offering was the corporate dramedy Dhumrapan , and this time they have come up with Kaand , another contemporary piece in which two policemen (Kumud Mishra and Shubhrajyoti Barat) patrol the night streets in a Delhi where crime runs rampant. Elsewhere, Gowri Ramnarayan’s Mathemagician , a monodrama that saw a modest run in Chennai and Edinburgh in 2010, will be revived by Mohit Takalkar in a translation by Tariq Siddiqui, with the gifted Ipshita Chakraborty Singh taking on the titular character of an outstanding mathematician who becomes the chief economist of the Persian Empire circa 500 BC. Rounding the list up is the Hoshruba Repertory’s Qissa Urdu Ki Aakhiri Kitaab Ki, a farcical banter based on Ibn-e-Insha’s satirical treatise, Urdu Ki Aakhiri Kitaab , that is chock-full with tidbits and anecdotes that cover a mind-bogglingly vast array of topics, and its delectable wit is likely to find delightful mouthpieces in sparring partners Gopal Datt and Danish Hussain, the former known for his comic declamation and the latter for his refined enunciation.
The line-up also includes a revival of an age-old Marathi sangeet natak, Sangeet Manapman , written by Kakasaheb Khadilkar, one of the unimpeachable stalwarts of Marathi theatre. The revival condenses the original text and libretto substantially, and incorporates contemporary stagecraft to retell a still topical tale of class discrimination centred around Dhairyadhar, a brave but poor army general and Bhamini, the daughter of a rich landlord, who rejects his hand in marriage. Directed by Nipun Dharmadhikari, this version opened in 2011 to mark the centenary of the classic play’s first ever performance. The fringe performances include Rajashree Sawant Wad’s rendition of Sushama Deshpande’s Tichya Aaichi Goshta Arthat Mazya Athavanincha Phad and Yugandhar Deshpande’s Backstagewala Koni . Taken together, the bouquet of Marathi offerings at the festival is certainly worthwhile, and nicely rounds out an interesting itinerary that appears to cater to a much wider demographic than apparent on first glance.
The Prithvi Theatre Festival 2017 runs from this evening until November 13; for more details see bookmyshow.com
