The 12th Nehru Theatre Festival was probably the most lacklusture and arbitrary event that I have seen in recent years. In fact it also pales terribly in comparison with the festival's previous editions. As usual I and some of my other colleagues from the Press were not intimated in time. This has been the one of the most annoying aspects of the festival over the years. Interested members of the Press are thus left to follow their own initiative and the Press Card that the organizers deign to give is at best a joke. Auditorium attendants have scant regard for the Press while the card merrily finds its way into the hands of all and sundry.

To begin with the Press Conference that I attended had hardly any material of consequence. The only point to be noted was that this festival was a tribute to the memory of Vijay Tendulkar who had recently passed away. But what was presented on stage in memory of the theatre legend and social revolutionary; a man far ahead of his time were less than ordinary productions. In no way did the staging of his two plays- GIDHADE and SAKHARAM BINDER befitted the stature of the writer, whose plays are celebrated in Indian theatre.

GIDHADE was Nehru Centre's home production and was directed by Pramod Pawar who during the Press Conference humbly proclaimed that he was just supervising the rehearsals as Shri Tendulkar's scripts had all the directions for staging the play and for him it was enough to merely follow the instructions! I couldn't help but recall my own experience with the play in which I had played Rama's character. This was in 1969/70 under the direction of Sai Paranjpe. Sai too had respected the instructions in the script but it had a veritable spirit of its own.

The script is almost forty years old and although its theme may still seem relevant we have to devise new ways of seeing it. Nehru Centre's production was caught up in the 1950s and even what seemed shocking then was diluted in this production. Its pace was also slow due to the repetitive nature of the actions. Actually the script should have been edited or the graph of the action should have been shaped to ascend rather than having flat high-pitched uncontrolled voices, the overacting of a drunken stupor and the non-stop rowdiness of the family members. Meanwhile the illegitimate son is cast as boring and dull.

The set and light design too left much to be desired and the characterizations of the quarelling brothers, father and sister had no shade in accordance to their respective sex, age, status, frame of mind or temperament. Throughout the play they were drunk and were doing nothing besides stumbling, physically and verbally abusing each other and shouting! One of the most shocking visuals of the script is that of the pregnant sister being physically abused by her two brothers. After being hit and kicked around by her brothers she loses her baby and a huge red patch of blood appears on her saree. With her back to the audience she is supposed to take a full circle on the stage and this picture is quite gruesome. Ignoring this splendid instruction, Nehru Centre's production treats the scene with a patchy red light thrown on the clothes and the sister's meek exit from the back side! Similarly the suicide by the pregnant wife and her husband were devoid of any impact.

Equally lukewarm was Yatri's production of SAKHARAM BINDER. Once again there was a perceptible lack of characterization, the playing of the Mridang came across as childishly fake, the casting was inappropriate and the performances lacked the energy and conviction. Once again the brutality was diluted and this powerful play was reduced to a conventional type that induced mindless laughter and applause.

A good thing about the festival were the film screenings, which included the celluloid version of Tendulkar's famous play SHANTATA! COURT CHALU AAHE. Tendulkar himself wrote the screenplay for the film. Stayadev Dubey not only directs a stellar cast but is also ably supported by Govind Nihalani's camerawork. This critically acclaimed film (1971) however is not as impactful as some productions of the play have been. It is neither here nor there in the sense that it was too caught up between the demands made by theatre as against those made by film. Let's say that the director couldn't make up his mind vis-a-vis the two reciprocative but essentially different formats.

On the whole the festival was a most disappointing affair.

*The writer is a senior theatre and television person who has trained under Ebrahim Alkazi at the National School of Drama (NSD). She has written for publications such as 'The Asian Age' and is a regular contributor to the Prithvi Theatre Newsletter (PT Notes). She has offered theatre training to students at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and is an important critical voice for the Gujarati Theatre. Some inputs in this article are courtesy Deepa Punjani.