A 10-day national theatre festival began at Sant Gadge Auditorium of the Sangeet Natak Academy, Gomti Nagar, to a packed house, on Thursday.
Theatre groups from Delhi and Mumbai, among other places, are participating in the festival.
The fiesta began with the powerful performance of artistes of the Darpan group with a play titled Swaha directed by NSD’s former student Subhdeep Raha.
Swaha, a suspense thriller, revolves around a war time platonic love story-cum-thriller in the backdrop of the 1971 Indo-Pak War which led to the formation of Bangladesh.
Surya Prakash Bhatia, a retired Army general played by Anil Rastogi helps rescue a Bangladeshi girl, Sikha Bose (Divya Bhardwaj Bhattacharya), during the war which leaves a lasting impression on her. They never get in touch afterwards except through a few letters between the two.
After 40 years, Sikha Bose, now a journalist, visits India and comes to meet Bhatia suddenly.
Bhatia is in a dilemma as his son Mandar (Shubham Kumar Dubey) has recently joined Indian intelligence agency RAW and he would not want a Bangladeshi in his house.
However, Sikha turns out to be a senior RAW official who has been sent to investigate Bhatia’s son who is suspected to have links with the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. She solves the case with Jassi (Vikas Srivastav), a RAW agent who is close to the family.
{{/usCountry}}However, Sikha turns out to be a senior RAW official who has been sent to investigate Bhatia’s son who is suspected to have links with the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. She solves the case with Jassi (Vikas Srivastav), a RAW agent who is close to the family.
{{/usCountry}}Later, when Bhatia gets to know about his son’s involvement with the ISI, he shoots his own son, evoking a collective gasp from the unsuspecting audience.
Rakesh Kumar (Kushwant Khanna), also a former RAW official, brought a comical angle to the play. Virendra Rastogi as Siddhu, a domestic helper, provided relief too.
Earlier, the event was inaugurated by deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak, who was also joined by folk singer Malini Awasthi and assistant chief secretary Navneet Sehgal.
Pathak also felicitated some veteran and former artists of the Darpan group including Ram Govind, BC Gupta and Vimal Banerjee, among others.