Delhi’s India Habitat Centre to host theatre fest from Sept 19 to 28

It boasts an envious line up of plays that weigh in on a plethora of issues – from caste, gender, and social discrimination to unemployment, mental health, and climate change

New Delhi

The fest will kick off with ‘Mehroon’. (Sourced)

One evening, a decade ago, Bhumika Dube – who was still a student at the National School of Drama (NSD) – watched in awe a 70-year-old caretaker, atop a ladder, plucking jamun from a tree, albeit guided by younger helpers. “She had mustered up the courage to do this, she followed her heart, her desires… And her name was Kela. This simple act soon turned into an idea for my play, Kela Jamunwali,” said Dube.

The 75-minute Hindi play is being staged in the city on September 23 as a part of the annual theatre festival by India Habitat Centre (IHC). “I have always questioned the orthodox marriage traditions of my family, of getting women married to trees first in case their astrological charts are not considered auspicious; or of men inheriting property, not women,” she said.

The theatre festival, from September 19-28, to be held at IHC, boasts an envious line up of plays that weigh in on a plethora of issues – from caste, gender, and social discrimination to unemployment, mental health, and climate change. “Through the year, local theatre groups perform here, while this festival gives us a chance to bring in contemporary plays from across the country,” said Vidyun Singh, the creative head of the programmes department at IHC.

The festival kicks off on September 19 with Mehroon, a Hindustani musical play by director and actor Amitesh Grover and playwright Sarah Mariam, and narrates the story of a grieving woman, who moulds a man from clay each night, as she travels from West Bengal to Rajasthan in search for love. “As she moves, the music also changes, so there is inspiration from Baol singers, folk traditions of Chhattisgarh, among others. The play is about love, power of transformation, desire, and even migration,” said Grover.

On the calendar is also Saanp Seedhi, a 90-minute Hindi adaption of popular British play Sleuth by Anthony Schaffer, directed by actor-director Shubhrajyothi Barat, on September 21. Theatre artiste Durga Venkatesan’s multilingual play, Garam Roti lets the audience decide what is being staged at all as an audio library of women speaking about their fears as they navigate womanhood is opened up for the audience to pick from. “Male gaze in scriptwriting is already in abundance, this is the female gaze.This way the script becomes a conversation. The idea is to create a space where women can say things they haven’t before,” she said. After each staging, the women in the audience are invited to record their fears, and those recordings are then added to the library.

Other plays in the line-up include Nazar ke Saamne by Angarika Guha, Anushi Agrawal and Ekta, described as a collective expression of bodies which endured caste and sexual violence; Mezok by Jyoti Dogra, which explores desire; and Khichik by Shiv Subrahmanyam, which depicts a relationship over forty-five years. The festival ends on September 28, with 305 Galli Mantola, a play directed by Faisal Rashid set in Old Delhi and depicts the nostalgia, desires, and histories of a lane’s inhabitants as they grapple with change.