The 23rd Iftekhar Theatre Festival ‘Yaadien’ concluded on Sunday with staging a Hindi play ‘Bhookh Aag Hai’. The play was staged at Antrang Hall of Bharat Bhavan.
The festival was organised by the Iftekhar Cricket Academy with the collaboration of Bharat Bhavan and Directorate of Culture, Madhya Pradesh.
The seven day theatre festival was organised in the memory of one of the renowned and distinguished playwright Alakhnandan. Featuring different genres of theatre play and entertaining the theatre-goers of the city, the fest ended with Bhookh Aag Hai.
Directed by a noted theatre director KG Trivedi based on the story written by Krishna Balev Vaid. The theatre-goers of the city enjoyed the show with the mesmerising performance by the artists of Trikarshi Theatre Group, Bhopal.
The play surrounds the curiosity of a teenage girl, who has been asked to write an essay on ‘hunger’. Being from a rich family, the girl is unable to understand what actually the ‘Bhook’ is.
The family brings home a set of beggars, who will give their darling daughter different view points for the essay on hunger. The curious child asks the beggar girl to describe hunger. The beggar girl tries mime, idiom, and acting, but cannot convey what hunger is.
The song of the beggars about hunger being a fire that will destroy the world is the song that the capitalist parents used to sing in their youth. As a result, no one is able to define the hunger.
While highlighting on the storyline of the play director KG Trivedi told The Pioneer, “It is a very simple satire script. The script undoubtedly lessens the gap between the audiences and the theatre plays, as the audiences could relate their stories with the story of the play.”
The play is rift is between those who cannot understand hunger and those who cannot describe it. He further said that the audiences would also think upon the fact that what is hunger and this is the essence of the play. The play created the satire and left the audiences whirled in the strokes of laughter.
Before the play, four theatre artists were awarded the Chhota KG Award for Best Acting (Male and Female Categories). The award was received by hyam Munshi, Tana Ji Rao, Archana Kumar Shailendra and Monika Tiwari.