‘Displacement like fighting a smokescreen’
Packed into a speeding compartment like calves carried to a slaughterhouse, hushed and huddled together, a herd of men, women and children luxuriate for the time being in a sweet sense of escape…illusive and ephemeral like a dream.Yes, it is an illusive escape from a dark nimbus of fatal smoke, racing just behind to catch up with them at the earliest possible stop in the milling crowd in sordid slums, a new phenomenon, aggressively assuming more and more perspective in the world after the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
They are homeless, landless, and now they become faceless and raceless nomads in search of a home. Will they find their homes and settle once again, while their so-called saviors are yelling at each other in Copenhagen?Smoke is now a pandemic plague. Large clouds are rolling all over the sky. Nowhere to go, no place to hide, waiting in agony to die in suffocation.This is the last scene of the play Dhuan, produced and staged at different venues in Orissa. The illiterate and innocent tribals at almost all industrial hubs in Orissa, have put up a brave fight against the land grabbers...courting jail, laying out their lives…only to give in to the smoke of words, smug of high promises, these dream merchants entice them with. An educated youth of this displaced community asks a journalist writing a biopic of the society…an intriguing question, “How would he get rid of suffocating smoke?” Conceptualised and directed by Subodh Patnaik, the head of Natya Chetana, a Bhuba-neswar-based premiere theatre organisation, and assisted by Sujata Priyambada, a dedicated theatre activist, Dhuan catches the fancy of the audience with the innovative use of body language in the portrayal of the scenes on a unique stage modeled after Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra. The stage has a black backdrop on one side for behind the scene chores with three other sides open to audience. With the surrealistic set designing, the play shies away from any electronic musical instruments to for the background music. “Intimate Theatre”— as director Subodh Patnaik christens it, is the result of his arduous experiment with theatre in Orissa over the last 25 years.
Akshaya Kumar Sahoo
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