‘Life Canvas’ comes alive, paints futility of materialism

Tribune News Service

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Amritsar, December 1

The second Poorvottar Rang Utsav began with Asim Kumar Nath’s Assamese play “Life Canvas” at Punjab Nasthala. The festival is being organized by the National School of Drama (NSD) and will bring fine theatre forms from the North-East to the city.

“Life Canvas” brought on stage the story of four friends, mostly characterized by the young, ambitious generation of today that doesn’t shy away from acting on their instincts. The four central characters symbolise different emotions, each having a different perspective on life.

Kaushik, a self-centred, materialistic guy, murders one of the characters in the story, Bibek, to marry Aishwarya, the girl with lots of money. Despite the attempts to buy his appiness, Kaushik fails to do so and remains miserable in his marriage, while he still craves for his ex-girlfriend Anamika.

The fifth friend, Jiben, who is a silent observer in all this, is the narrator, and speaks about the conflicts of life, philosophy and changing mindsets. The Assamese play used a lot of physical theatre like gestures and music to engage the audience. Glimpses of Assamese folk culture were also given through songs and music. The end of the play highlights the vanity of chasing materialistic things. According to the director Asim Kumar Nath, “The play is about changing social set-up, where complex social functioning clashes with the individual ideology and paints a different story every time.”

Nath has been prominently working with experimental theatre, including folk art forms and body theatre into his stories. He said his plays are about his characters, not story. “My plays are not centred on one plotline or protagonist, but several characters, who complete the picture and add to the perspective of the play as a whole. The main question in this play was – where does the life’s journey take us?”

Meanwhile, director of the festival, Kewal Dhaliwal and Punjab Natshala’s Jatinder Brar, inaugurated the event and welcomed the artists to the four-day theatre feast.