Night-long nautanki vanishes

If anyone wanted to see what ‘Nautanki’ (is one of the most popular folk operatic theatre performance form of Northern India) was in its original form and how it has got degenerated to a different level of vulgar dances and cheap comedy over a period of changing times, the Hindi play ‘Tamasha-E-Nautanki’ directed by Sajida and presented by National School of Drama (NSD) in association with Department of language and Culture truly showed it all, Ravindra Bharathi.

Treasure Art Association set up by Sajida in Manipur has truly shown how research and training process can build a new kind of theatre that can draw martial arts, traditional dances, music and different performing arts into its fold. According to Sajida ‘Nautanki’ in its true form has almost disappeared and the present generation does not know about it. Documentary film maker Mohan Joshi is the playwright for the play.

There is depiction of how in olden times there used to be night-long performances of ‘Nautanki’ which had ‘Shayari’ and powerful music, which have been more or less replaced by Hindi film songs. Sneha as Sonkali, Debarati Majumdar as Gullo Rani, Sangeeta Tiple as Baiji,Mohan Joshi as Sardar and Shiv Prasad as Juggan and Anirudha Wanker as Rashid excelled in their performances.

The music team lead by Pandit Ram Dayal Sharma truly showed how powerful was the role of what could be termed as ‘Nautanki music’ interspersed with some modern changes. Jameel Khan on nagada, Manish Kumar on harmonium, Munsi Khan on dholak, Omprakash Nagar on Clarinet and Rajkumar on rhythms truly elevated the production with excellent performance.

By Jaywant Naidu