The magic of Manto was again spread on the stage leaving the theatre lovers of the city enchanted. The theatre enthusiasts were taken on the life journey of Sadaat Hassan Manto through a play Ik Si Manto.
As a part of National Theatre Festival being organised by Bharat Bhavan, the play was staged here on Tuesday. Directed by Kewal Dhaliwal the play was beautifully performed by the artists of Manch Rangmanch Sanstha, Amritsar.
As Manto is one of the distinguished personalities and has gone through different phases and situations, it was a real challenge for Dhaliwal to project his life span in a theatre play. Here Dhaliwal used a sensible stage craft where he divided the incidents happened in Manto’s life. These incidents were told by different narrators on stage creating an impact over the audience.
Moreover, Ik Si Manto is a dramatic presentation of Saadat Hasan Monto’s Journey of life, Court cases, letters and famous stories like Tamasha, Naya Kanoon, Khol Do, Syah Haashie, Sahai and Toba Tek Singh by creatively correlating them with the experiences his life passed through.
According to the director, the play then signifies what Manto said, he stood for, and above all, his relationships with the characters and situations he created. In fact it is portrayal of the existentialist signification of the literacy phenomenon that goes with the name of Manto.
Dhaliwal says, “The stark naked reality of the days of partition that we find portrayed in his stories written during and after those catastrophic days in a picture of both the lofty heights and the hellish depths that human values of love, affection and brotherhood that Manto experienced at the time of his decision to leave India for Pakistan, he never betrayed his commitment to humanism in his works. Essential thing about his works is the expression of this humanism in situations which are otherwise full of pungent ironies, sometimes bordering on nakedness.”
Ik Si Manto is a testimony to this love for humanity for which his literary works are known and which has given a new meaning to the hackneyed terms of literary criticism like realism, progressivism, he added.
The wondrous presentation through music, lighting and creativity of artists added zest in the presentation that mesmerized the audience.