Years-old folk theatre of Kashmir Bhand Pather will be featured online by Department of Culture, Madhya Pradesh. Under the regular series Abhinayan a play Shikargah Pather will be featured on Friday.
The folk play is directed by Imtiuaz Ahmad, Khashmir.
It belongs to the oral tradition in which the scripts are handed down from one generation to the other following Guru Shishya Parampara. Only the scripts and the themes of the theatre remains old, the performances are always new as it is manifested in the new space and time.
The plays of the Bhands are called pather, a word that must have been derived from Patra, a dramatic character.
Bhand comes from the Bhavana, a satirical and realistic drama that is generally a monologue. It has been mentioned in Bharata’s Natya Shastra too.
The bhand actors are skill-fully roped in the play and they enact contemporary religious, social and political issues into the prevalent stories.
These actors used to train themselves to be a skilful actor, dancer, acrobat, and musician.
The stories are narrated in such a manner that every performance has something fresh for the audiences.
The vocabulary used in Bhand Pather has connections to the Vakhs and Shrukhs of great medieval and modern mystics of Kashmir.
