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Rang Vidushak of Bhopal presented ARANYADHIPATI TANTIYA directed by Bansi Kaul at the NSD Satellite Festival in Mumbai on 8th January 2008. The plot of the play goes back to the 1857 revolt in which along with Tatya Tope, those who fought the British were tribals, who wished to protect their own soil. There were thousands of these warriors but the Tantiya tribe remains one of the forgotten tribes that have not been acknowledged on the pages of Indian history. One of the reasons for the tribals joining the movement was to free the country from the chains of slavery. Amongst those tribals, young Tantiya Mama’s fight was reminiscent of Robin Hood’s character. He has been immortalized in popular memory and oral history. The sutradhar or narrator in the play takes forward the story of Tantiya, creating a bridge between the present and the past.
Bansi Kaul attempts to recreate the era through various prevalent forms of the akhada, natgiri, modern dance, story-telling, indigenous village-games and folk music. But all these theatrical components have reduced the collective fight for freedom to a fairytale like story, and that puts the aim of the play and its ultimate impact in opposite directions. The singers were good and impressive; the large ensemble of actors quite competent but the problem came up as soon as almost all the characters, rather than faithfully enacting their parts assumed the role of the narrator and started addressing the audience. The narrations replaced the visualisation of the necessary emotional dramatic events in the script while the visualisations were only confined to Tantiya Mama’s running and to the British soldiers chasing him.
An enactment of dramatic events like torching Tantiya’s hut, his being captured was expected to be seen rather than just being narrated. At places the treatment was over simplified, to make Tantiya invincible. The set looked well but could have been utilized imaginatively. The tribals have mastery over moving vertically and horizontally as they possess the human intelligence with strong animal instincts and agility. Half the time it was expected that Tantiya would climb the tree and hide in the foliage!
In the opening scene, the costumes of the actors are that of villagers rather than of the tribals. The music and sound effects were appropriate and dramatic. Choreography however lacked variation and became repetitive. The light design too wasmediocre. It is an uphill task to recreate a hundred and fifty year old era and that too through a character that looks almost fictitious or alive only in oral tradition. Here the mix of myth and history did not gel well together. Again to bring in the character of the Pir as a guiding force is to over emphasize the Hindu Muslim unity, and even if the same Pir existed or not, is hardly of any consequence. The play is quite unfortunately suspended between the lack of any interesting physical action and the lack lusture script by Farid Bazmi. If it was conceived as a celebration of 150 years of our freedom struggle, its nationalist sentiment leaves much to be desired.
*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 also offers theatre training to students at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and is an important critical voice for the Gujarati Theatre.
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