Heritage Repackaged

BEFORE the play Hanuman Ki Ramayan could be performed at Prithvi House in Mumbai last week,its director Devendra Sharma alerted the audience of a particular etiquette that must accompany while watching swang nautanki .

Written by Alaka Sahani
June 5, 2012 01:44 AM IST

3 min read

BEFORE the play Hanuman Ki Ramayan could be performed at Prithvi House in Mumbai last week,its director Devendra Sharma alerted the audience of a particular etiquette that must accompany while watching swang nautanki . The audience is never passive. Whenever you like something,you should respond with a wah wah or kya baat hai, he said. Barely had he finished saying this when a young boy responded,Awesome,man. Somewhere,Sharmas statement struck a chord. The performance inched closer to what this assistant professor of communication at California State University had in mind to introduce urban youngsters to traditional art forms.

Quite predictably,only a handful of children in the audience understood the Hindi lines of the play that had a smattering of English,even though they seemed to have got its essence. But most of them floundered while trying to express their views in Hindi. Sharma put them at ease and asked them to speak in a language they were comfortable in. English dominated the interaction thereafter. Later,information on swang nautanki and the meaning of the Hindi terms used in the play were circulated.

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The experience,points out Sharma,is an example of Indian children having little exposure to their culture today. It made him a fourth generation nautanki and rasiya artist and son of Pandit Ram Dayal Sharma,a stalwart in this field take up the mission of acquainting young viewers with this traditional art form. Interestingly,this was also the first time that performers were dabbling in nautanki. For nautanki,the pitch has to be high, says Sharma,who was happy with the repertorys work. We often shut the windows to our heritage. The knowledge of cultural context is important, he says.

This was why he had initially lapped up the proposal made by Shaili Sathyu,artistic director of Mumbai-based Gillo Theatre Repertory,to work on a childrens play. A short mythological story by Devdutt Pattanaik seemed perfect for this project. This production is designed as a stand alone performance that can be staged anywhere, says Sathyu. Sharma spends most of his three-month-long summer break and one month of winter vacation designing and performing nautanki shows and his work is not limited to India. In California,he has a nautanki mandali where most of the members have a day job. Sharma and Sathyu intend to turn this into a longer play soon. Maybe by then,young audiences in India would have developed a better understanding of this art form.