Deconstructing Ibsen

Theatre societies of universities love to experiment with the notions of the old school and what could be a better platform than to showcase their talent at a theatre festival? It is to gratify to this urge of theatre loving youth that the acclaimed ‘Delhi Ibsen University Festival 2012’ is back with a bang!

Organised by Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration with Royal Norwegian Embassy, the festival will highlighting the enormous capabilities of talented college students through avant-garde interpretations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays in Indian context. Henrik Ibsen also referred to ‘The Father of Prose Drama’ is a major Norwegian playwright, theatre director and poet of the 19th century.

Five competitors are set to stage their version of Ibsen. The festival will open with staging of Lady from the Sea by The School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU and will be carried forward by Jai Jawan Party - to be staged by Ramjas College; An Enemy of the People by St. Stephen’s, Burn by Lady Shri Ram College for Women and will conclude with Maitreyi’s Bipolars.

Though all are strong teams and competition bound to be cut-throat, the students sound confident. Shubham Bhatia, president, Theatre Society, Ramjas says, “We have adapted ‘The League of the Youth’ and based it in Uttar Pradesh as Jai Jawan Party. This fest isn’t about competition but about understanding and presenting the powerful characters created by Ibsen.”

A similar thought is shared by Amita Rana from JNU, “It is a huge responsibility because the university is being represented by one department here. But it is a process rather than a competition. It is through fests like these that students get to experiment with classics.”

Yama, from LSR says, “Our adaptation Burn is a combination of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, John Osborn’s Look Back in Anger and Indian playwright Neel Chaudhri's Burn.” Wasn’t so much experimentation difficult? “We don't study Ibsen as we read Shakespeare. So for us, we had to start reading him from scratch. It was like giving birth to an entirely new idea,” she adds.  

Festival director, Nissar Allana says, “Indian theatre is based on Sangeet Natak tradition where the important thing is scriptwriting. In that sense, Ibsen’s writings are perfect in the Indian context. Ibsen brings realism in Indian drama and his work is so contemporary, that I was sure that young directors would do justice to it. I thus asked University students if they would like to do Ibsen. Since they were merely doing Shakespeare in contemporary time, Ibsen proved interesting to them.”

At a time when Shakespearean drama is being exhaustively experimented with, it will be an interesting opportunity to see how youngsters put together their ideas and thoughts to deconstruct Ibsen!The festival is scheduled from September 19-23 at LTG Auditorium, 7 pm on all five days.