Why you need to attend these plays in Mumbai this weekend

Four award-winning plays from rural hinterlands spread across the country will present untold stories at a first-ever collaborative effort with the NCPA this week

Theatremaker Bidyut Nath from Assam’s Nonoi village is busy building bamboo tents when we catch up with him for a short chat. These makeshift stage props might not be grand and fancy, but they are vital to the story he has to retell this weekend on stage. “As a child, I remember seeing these structures pop up every year around monsoon to help villagers after devastating flood water from the Kopili and Sampawati rivers swept their homes away,” he recalls.

Elsewhere in Madhya Pradesh’s Chattarpur, director Swati Dubey remembers the sound of water, this time trickling into glasses, clearly marked and set aside by her mother to serve guests from the lower castes. “The practice was to first enquire about their last name. That would give away their identity. I don’t know how it is in Mumbai right now, but in many of India’s villages, the glasses are still marked,” she reveals.  

The crew readies the bamboo structure for the performance of Raghunath

Dubey and Nath’s thirst for telling these stories to the world eventually led them to the National School of Drama, then to the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) where they both bagged accolades, and now to Mumbai, where they will perform alongside two other META award-winning plays.

“Awards aren’t always markers of a play’s true value. But when I heard these stories from parts of India that don’t usually enjoy the spotlight, bringing them to Mumbai felt like the right thing to do. As a Westerner who has lived here for half a decade, I can tell that these are stories that Mumbaikars deserve to hear,” shares Bruce Guthrie, head of theatre and films, NCPA.

Raghunath

Nath’s play, titled Raghunath, begins where his childhood memories end. “As an adult, I often wondered what it might take to open the world’s eyes to the struggles of a village that drowns every year. Our struggles make it to the news channels every year, and fade into irrelevance a few debates later,” he shares. Taking on the titular lead role, he tells the story of a father who has lost his daughter to flawed disaster management, and his unusual idea to bring the village into limelight.

For Dubey, the plot of her fictional play picks up from a familiar story as well, just not hers. A few hundred kilometres from her hometown is Behmai village in Uttar Pradesh, where ‘Bandit Queen’ Phoolan Devi killed 20 men in retaliation to caste-based oppression in 1981. “No one knows what happened to the wives of the 20 men who died that day. Our play is an exploration of their anger, sorrow, denial and subsequent realisations that help them come to terms with the truth,” she says.

Swati Dubey, Bidyut Nath and Bruce Guthrie

While Dubey’s Agarbatti is performed in Hindi with hints of Bundeli to ensure the audience can keep up with the poignant tale, Nath’s play is written and performed fully in Assamese with running subtitles. “When I wrote this play, I called up my old friends across Assam to put together a crew. These are amateur actors who drive e-rickshaws, run small businesses and work day jobs on other days. Naturally, Assamese is the only language they can speak,” he smiles.

Leading up to D-day, the duo is already feeling the butterflies in their stomach. “It’s our first show in Mumbai. It’s all very overwhelming for us,” shares Nath.  “But we must tell these stories bravely,” Dubey reminds us. “Not only to play our part in bringing about change, but also to remind the urban audience that there exists an India not far away from where they live that leads a starkly different life,” she signs off.

ON December 19 to 22; 7 pm onwards 
AT NCPA, Nariman Point. 
LOG ON TO ncpamumbai.com 
ENTRY Rs 450 onwards

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