Manipur maybe culturally the richest state in the Northeast, but the evolution of contemporary theatre has caught up more in Assam. There were plays in Manipuri, Assamese and one each from Mizoram and Meghalaya in the languages Mizo and Garo respectively, at the festival that concluded on Wednesday at the National School of Drama.
The plays had a freshness and charm and revealed the social lives of people. Some plays were astonishingly sophisticated like Bidyawati Phukan’s Guti Phulor Gamusa in Assamese that competed in and won the 2010 META Best Director award for Phukan. The theme of the play is Bihu, an exotic dance that is performed during three festivals heralding the new seasons, new agriculture and farming cycles. Bihu songs and dances celebrate the vegetation myth in a myriad ways, reflecting the longings of the Assamese people and the inextricable ties between man and nature.
Phukan believes that every child in Assam grows up with the spirit of Bihu deeply entrenched in her/his psyche. She takes the help of a novel by Leela Gogoi for a story set in a village that reflects the Assamese way of life. The ritualistic marriage of frogs for rain, the final buffalo fight among the rivals for the love for the lovely Ghunusa and her wooing by the accomplished drummer Shubha display polished choreography.
The Mizo play Du-kon by A Chik theatre in Pabitra Rabha’s direction is an episodic drama depicting the contemporary social environment. It shows the migration from villages by people wanting to make quick money in the cites. A young boy, newly married, is lured to the city along with some young men. The scene where the boy blunders into a drug den is tragically funny with rock music and some very competent dancing; not so funny is the arrest of the innocent boy.
Sitting outside a nightclub, he sings an old folk song, hearing which his wife comes out with some other migrants. They return to the village, to innocence and beauty, love and kindness, where no one is there to knock you down with bitterness, cruelty and violence as in the city! This view is not without its flaws, especially in the fast changing scenario, where cities and villages are moving closer every day. Rabha admits to the conflicts and confusions in life and that the different choices one makes determine our fate. The main actor is very good and conveys this bewilderment very well. The enactments by the young actors, who Chik believes in working with, are sincere. The sets are economic and the scene changes are swift and efficient.
The highlight of the festival was the opening play, Rabindranath Tagore’s Dakghar, in which the great Manipuri actor Heisnam Sabitri enacted the young child Amal. To see an old woman play a child was unusual and to watch Sabitri as the young boy Amal who is kept in a dark room and who communicates with the outside world through his window was a rare treat. The director Heisnam Kanhailal, whose has a predominantly non-verbal style with an emphasis on body movements, has become a cult figure in the Northeast with several followers in and outside Manipur, including Sukracharjya Rabha from Assam who also staged a play at the festival — To’Paidom, based on a Rabha tribal folk tale.
It is difficult to describe the miraculous forces at work in Sabitri but the effect is Sabitri projecting herself through Amal, never becoming him but giving an impression of him through her own body and voice. It neither is a personification of the character, nor is it merely a projection. It is as if the actor is reflecting or showing a character, yet involving the audience in the fate of Amal emotionally. No Brechtian alienation here. Sabitri goes right for the heart and reaches it too. Breathtaking acting by Sabitri in a superbly designed play, which is also well ached by the others in the cast.
Moirang Parva directed by senior actor Loitongbam Dorendra — he was the first Arjun in Ratan Thiyam’s classic play Chakravyuha — is an attempt to revitalise/reinvent a secular theatre form of Manipur that features an all woman cast. Originating in mandap leelas like Gaur Leela, Sabha and Virat Parvas, Moirang Parva started in 1895. It flourished and was popular between 1920 and 1960. It has several ingredients from the Manipuri performing arts, like the narrative form Warileeba, Nata Sankeertana, Pena etc.