The 46th Annual cultural Festival of Kalasagaram ended with two Tamil plays— Petror Dhinam and Washingtonil Tirumanam both directed by Kovai Paddu. On the first Kalasagaram gave away awards to winners in annual music competitions and following days were celebrated as ‘Nataka Kalasagara’ in honour of Kalaimamani Koothapiran.
Kovai Paddhu’s ‘Good will Stage’ of Chennai brought staged Petror Dhinam meaning ‘Parents Day’ to which Kalaimamani Gajendra Kumar provided the story line. Meenakshi and her husband Sivakumar bring up their children Prakash and daughter Brinda with care and love. After they grew up son, Prakash pursued medicine and becomes a surgeon, while Brinda pursues software and becomes an software engineer. The two children get married into wealthy families. What follows next was aimed at displaying a son’s selfishness and the way he ignores his parents. The playwright then talks of many ‘days’ like ‘Lover’s Day’, ‘Friendship day’ and so on and then stresses on the need of celebrating ‘Parents Day’ saying it was the duty of children to take care of their parents. The artistes featured in this drama gave scintillating performances, displaying good team work.
Washingtonil ThirumanamThe play Washingtonil Thirumanam , was a comic play . It was based on the work of late ‘Savi’ and has been staged five hundred twenty five times. The story is about one American couple Mrs and Mr. Rockfeller who wish to watch a South Indian marriage in progress to be celebrated in Washington. So much so that the couple even meet the expenses including airfares to transport the marriage parties. The two priests for the wedding- Ammanji Sastry and Sambu Sastry, played by Koothapiran and Srinivasan respectively, resort to fighting on every issue with stylised verbal innuendoes. This was quite humorous hurling audience into raptures for their display of mannerisms.
