Shiela Bharat Ram Theatre Festival: Audience get transported to a simpler and purer time through Prem Kabootar

The play’s narrative revolves around the friendship of three school-going boys — Salim, Raju and Sunil, and their unrelenting yearning for love. While Salim, a casanova, was lapping up all the female attention, Raju and Sunil were left with nothing but morsels of passing glances and cryptic smiles.

Amartya Bhattacharya (left), Ashutosh Singh Rathore (centre), Ayush Sharma portraying the charcters of Sunil, Salim and Raju respectively. (Credits: SRCPA)

It didn’t help matters when Salim gushed about his bewitching love story with Meenakshi — the cynosure of all eyes. Meanwhile, Sunil venerated Salim for his charming demeanour to the extent that he went head over heels in love with Salim’s sweetheart Meenakshi. Things went into a spiral when the narrator of the story, Sunil, who had a way with words, for the sake of friendship, was coaxed into writing love letters to Meenakshi’s friend Lata, on behalf of Raju. What ensued was a stimulating and titillating version of the old Bollywood romances encompassing love triangles, broken friendships, melancholic high-pitched fights, stylised dancing, unrequited love, reunions et al.

Placed on a platform in upstage centre, the cycle remained an overarching prop of the larger creative imagery. (Credits: SRCPA)

Having a predictable narrative, what set the play apart was Sameep Singh’s direction, which was experimental in nature and gave the play its exhilarating unusualness. From the opening scene to the denouement, there was no fadeout — arranging of props, changing of costumes, shifting of positions, all took place in front of the audience in a well-choreographed manner even as the actors never left the stage and sat in a row when not performing.

“I was always sure that I won’t transform the story by Manav Kaul into a play. I wanted to keep the flavour of the story alive. Whenever a playwright tries to write a play, they write it keeping in mind that it can happen in one or two locations so that it’s easy to shift scenes and set, but it does not happen with stories. ‘Kahaani mai koi bandish nahi hoti, vo khuli hai’ (a story does not have any constraints, it is open). I also wanted that in the same space everything takes place — all the scenes as well as actions. Fadeout also never happens because due to fadeout a play like this would have lost its flow and the ‘ras’ would have gotten interrupted,” said Sameep Singh, the director of the play.

The play represented a time when handing out a love letter symbolised the epitome of romance. (Credits: SRCPA)

“Things get created on the stage, they end on stage and after ending the next thing starts from there only,” he added.

Another directorial tool to give deeper meaning to the overall presentation was the use of the bicycle as a metaphor for yester years. Placed on a platform in upstage centre, the cycle remained an overarching prop of the larger creative imagery.

Explaining the process of portraying a character from a different era, Kiran Bhardwaj who played Meenakshi said, “I tried to understand the subtext and nuances behind a particular dialogue to understand the character better. To get the mannerisms and body gestures right I watched a lot of old movies.”

However, Amartya Bhattacharya who played Sunil said, “No matter what the era is, the essence of love remains the same so I focused on how to showcase love in its purest form.”

One of the most arresting bits of the play was the interaction that the alter-ego of Sunil had with the audience in between the play, marking a deviation from the stage-house differentiation. The actor came to the audience to evoke their response thus blurring the concept of stage altogether.

“We didn’t want to showcase a play but a story. That’s why we included the chit-chat with the audience as part of the show,” said Ashutosh Singh Rathore who played Salim.

Butterflies in the stomach, endless waiting for a sight of your beloved, the coyness, the boundaries, talking with eyes, saying a lot in a few words – the hallmarks of what constituted ‘love’ were revisited with this play as the audience got transported to a simpler and purer time. The play left a warm mushy feeling in the viewers’ minds even as the situational comedy it was peppered with had its heart in the right place.

📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!