Prithvi’s "epic" feast

MUMBAI, November 9: The Prithvi theatre festival, which began on Thursday, has placed particular emphasis on Indian legends and folklore. The great epic Mahabharata alone has six plays in the festival devoted to it. The first play staged was Teejan Bai’s Draupadi Cheer Haran and Dushshasana Vadh, which was repeated the next day. On both days, the theatre ran to packed houses. Teejan Bai is from Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh. The inhabitants of this place claim the Pandavas stayed in their village during their exile. In keeping with the Mahabharata tradition, Teejan Bai practices the art of Pandawani, where stories from the epic are told. But she also makes a break with the past, because she is the first Pandwani woman story-teller.

Said Divya Bhatia, co-director of the festival, “We didn’t deliberately choose plays based on the epic. Many people are reinterpreting Mahabharata these days, and paying more attention to unsung heros like Karna and Abhimanyu. This trend surfaced after we had made our selections.”

Ansh, a four-year-old Mumbai-based theatre group whose driving force is Makarand Deshpande, is today scheduled to perform Samrangan, again a play based on Mahabharata. It involves a dialogue between two pompous characters on the field of battle, the Kurukshetra.

Andha Yug is a play by Chorus Repertory Theatre, Manipur. Directed by Ratan Thiyam, it has the blind king Dritharashtra as its protagonist. Tomorrow, at St Andrews, is another play by the same group on Arjun’s brave son Abhimanyu. The festival will go on till November 23, 1997.