All the world's a stage

After entertaining the city with their plays for more than a decade now, city theatre group Shudrka recently took their act to Delhi, to perform at the 10th Delhi International Arts Festival, a famous annual event where artistes from across the world converge. This year, 30 countries and over 2,000 artistes participated in a cultural gathering and the Shudrka Theatre group made sure that Hyderabad was represented well.

Shudrka is quite popular in the city and has staged numerous plays in Hindi, Telugu and Bengali. The group was naturally elated on being chosen to represent the city at the DIAF 2016.

Talking about the play that they staged, director Swapan Mondal says, “This is one of our most recent plays that has had quite a successful run. We have staged four shows in Hyderabad and one in Udaipur and the audience has always appreciated it.”

Kissa Andher Nagri Ka is an adaptation of writer Bharatendu Harishchandra’s famous story Andher Nagri Choupat Raja, that deals with a rather crazy king of a kingdom and his even crazier rules that change every day. The group also infused Rabindranath Tagore’s songs into the play. They practised for many months and Mondal says, “Two weeks prior to the festival, we practised for four to six hours every day, apart from going about our day jobs.”

For the festival, the group had to send in a recording of their previous play. “When we sent in our entry, we didn’t expect much, but we knew our play would garner interest,” explains Pulak Halder, who is in charge of the light and stage design for the group.

“We took this decades old play and added a lot of situations and issues that happen these days. For instance, the blame game that is common in politics when a serious event takes place, which eventually never solves the problem,” explains Mondal.

The play also made ingenious use of culture from different parts of the country. “This is a non-realistic, folk-based play and so we decided to use a mix of cultures in it. For instance, there is art work from Worli and Pipli, a town in Odisha. We have also used dances like Bathukamma and the Koya dance,” says Mondal.

After the DIAF festival, the group is gearing up to finish 2016 with more plays. Mondal says, “We’re taking an adaptation of Albert Camus’ story, Caligula, to Kolkata; then we will be participating in the Rangapeeth National Theatre Festival in December, so we’ll have a very busy year.”