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National theatre festival gets underway

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Amritsar, July 1

The 21st national theatre festival kicked off at Virsa Vihar with the inaugural play ‘Mitti Na Hove Matrai’. The festival, which will be held from July 1 to 7, was inaugurated by eminent theatre personality and Shiromani dramatist Kewal Dhaliwal, writer Surinder Singh Sunar, Lakhwinder Johal, Haribhajan Singh Bhatia and others.

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The play ‘Mitti Na..’ is a Punjabi adaptation of German dramatist Bertolt Brecht’s famous play ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’, which was originally performed by Punjabi poet Amitoj decades ago. The narrative is based on a German myth surrounding a village and is presented in the popular folk art form ‘Nakkal Parampara’ used by Punjabi mimes known as ‘Nakaliya’.

The story develops the argument that cunning ruling governments wage war on innocent masses and the resulting economic instability is exploited by vested interests in stark contrast to the abject poverty and suffering faced by others.

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In the play, a king, egged on by his queen, plans to demolish a human settlement and build a huge park there. The inhabitants rise in revolt against the plan, and in the upheaval, the queen, in an attempt to save her life, flees her palace leaving behind her new-born child, who is carried by a little girl.

She sacrifices her good life to raise the child. But when the war ends and the child grows up, the king and queen claim their child from her, who is now so emotionally attached to the child that she wages a legal battle against it.

“The play produces hope that we don’t need to put up lost artefacts because they are, in fact, still connected to us. Our heritage is in our genes, in our blood. The reason we decided to perform the play in Nakkal style is because we wanted to get the message across that we need to preserve and appreciate our folk art heritage,” Kewal Dhaliwal said.

The actors in the play included Gurtej Mann, Shajan Kohinoor, Doli Sadal, Virpal Kaur, Gurdit Singh, Harpreet Singh and others. The music of the play was given by Kushagar Kalia and Harshita.

The festival will feature notable plays and bring scripts and narrative that relate and celebrate Punjab’s social and cultural fabric and bring to core some social prejudices and important issues to light.

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