The play Eidgarh Ki Jinnath by Abhishek Majumdar tells about the human cost of the conflict in Kashmir and the generation of radicalised children in the Valley.
The theatrically hypnotic work, staged on the second day of the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) in Thrissur on Tuesday, showcases their miserable childhood owing to the troubled state of affairs in the Valley and frequent Army interventions.
Orphaned siblings
The play, the Hindi-Urdu version of Mr. Majumdar’s original work Djinns of Eidgarh , develops with two orphaned siblings, Asharafi and Bilal, who are stranded by the troubles in Kashmir. Part of a teenage football team, 18-year-old Bilal has set great heights for his football career. He hopes to play in international level and aspires to live abroad with his sister.
But his hopes were curtailed by the violence around them.
The play talks about the psychological wounds inflicted by war on the poor children.
Mythical world
Haunted by hope, Asharafi is caught in the past. She is retreating into a mythical world of gods and demons.
Bilal is torn between escaping the myths of war and the cycles of resistance. In Muslim legend, the djinn is a spirit capable of assuming human or animal form and can exercise supernatural powers over people. Interweaving true stories and testimonies with Islamic story telling, the powerful and haunting play shifts between facts and fantasy, the real and the imagined.
With a hard-hitting subject with spectacular performances, it takes you on a roller-coaster ride.
The beautiful lighting of the play and the music take viewers to the picturesque Valley of Kashmir.
The play was staged by the Bhasha Centre for Performing Arts, Bengaluru.
“War, like tragedy, has no one shade. Not only does it mean different things to different people but it also means different things to the same person at different moments. Subjectivity, like theatre, is something one experiences in parallel, both as an individual and as a collective.
This double bind, this creation of meaning and experience of the one and the many, is as central to this production as it is to the story of Kashmir and of course to the act of performing tragedy in a world looking for a god of escape,” says Mr. Majumdar.
Told by the Wind by the Llanarth Group, United Kingdom, directed by Phillip Zarilli, and Silver Epidemic, Companhia Mungunzá de Teatro , Brazil, directed by Georgette Fadel were the other two plays staged on Tuesday.
