Issues come alive through street play

What could be a better way to educate the masses than to use the festival of lights as a platform? Thus a competition was recently organised by DLF Saket to celebrate ‘Victory of Good over Evil’ through thematic Nukkad Natak.

Various colleges were invited to participate and present their productions at a venue guarante­ed to provide maximum exposure to burning issues.

The event kick-started with Asmita’s popular play Corruption, which blatantly highlig­hts the issue. The subject is well depicted by Arvind Gaur. The production remained true to its style of attracting audiences through rhythmic lyrics which pointedly accused the government. Their performance helped to gather audiences for the plays that followed.

The competition began with Maharaja Agrasen College’s street play on ‘rising intolerance which displayed the problem through well-choreographed scenes delivered with enthusiasm that won the group the first prize. Dipankar Gupta, a team member says, “Our play shows increasing levels of intolerance and measures that can be used to counteract this problem through techniques of folklore.” The mixing of folklore in scenes where Shiva’s anger leads to him killing his own son Ganesha, forms the basis of the script and renders its narration strong.

But the heart rendering topic was staged by Ramanujan College’s team whose play Hunger explored the problem of wastage of food and starvation in India. Abhishek Pandey, a team member says, “There are a number of stalls outside our college which throw away left-over food. When I saw this, it hurt me thinking this food could have satiated the hunger of many and it thus inspired me to base our street play on this issue.”

The issue is undoubtedly a pertinent one and so is the one depicted by Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan (BVP)’s Sardar Patel College of Communications and Management, Badlaav.
The change that we all crave for but none strive to initiate was projected by this group. Vishal Sahai, programme director, BVP says, “Today, everyone wants a change in even the smallest things but nobody tries to bring about that change at their own level. We want a freedom fighter like Bhagat Singh to be born but in our neighbour’s house not ours and we have moved from Jagjit Singh to Honey Singh and from Hanuman to Shaktiman by overriding the significance of the former. This formed the basis of our play which we altered a little to match the given theme.”

Most of the plays staged are old ones and have been performed several times earlier, but this time were moulded a bit to suit the theme for the medium of street play offers possibilities unlike in one-act plays.

But the one that suited the theme the most was Maharaja Agrasen College’s street play, which walked away with the cash prize of Rs 15000 handed over by judges Bubbles Sabharwal and designer Mayur Gihotra. That is what we call a Diwali treat!