After a decade-long somnolence in creative Odia plays when the play “Ghinua” written by Prof Sanjaya Hati premiered at the Bharat Ranga Mahotsav, the celebrated international drama festival organised annually by the National School of Drama, New Delhi, all Odisha felt exulted and honoured. And that pride spread out across the country when the play was performed at different venues in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Mumbai, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Kanyakumari and Kolkata. Starting out in the early 1990s, Hati has traversed a long distance to be here in 2020 with 39 plays in his repertoire. Winner of the Odisha Sahitya Akademi-2015 award for his play “Mancha Maya”, he has written the script of the blockbuster film “Samay Hatare Dori” and the script of tele serial “Ahya Sulakhani” besides over sixty short stories and a fiction “Shwetapadma”. Possessing a genuine feeling for truth and a fearless voice, he is a columnist regularly contributing articles on social and cultural issues to leading newspapers besides having a huge stockpile of pedagogic and literary volumes to his credit. Bagging the Best Playwright Award of Eastern Media Ltd, his shelves display a kaleidoscope of awards and accolades. As an accomplished actor and a versatile stage director, he has addressed many State-level and national-level seminars on drama as a creative art. In an interview to The Pioneer, Hati spoke Sugyan Choudhury about the climate of drama in our State, the crisis in critical writing on drama.
Who’s to blame for the collapse of popular playhouses like Annapurna Theatre, Kalashree, Janata?
By the 1950s, Odia stage tradition was alive and kicking. Annapurna Theatre and the like had kept it alive since 1930. It was a prolific period with production of plays by Kalicharan Pattanaik, Ramachandra Mishra, Gopal Chhotray, Bhanjakishore Pattanaik, Bhikari Charan, who had become household names. But in the 60s, some major playwrights started departing from the traditional line and stepped into a new terrain of experimentation under the impact of Western trends. The audience failed to understand the imported thought and philosophy. Accustomed with relishing lyrical stories, the audience did not want to clutter their minds with perplexing cobwebs of absurd dramas. Manoranjan Das, Bijaya Mishra, to mention a few, writing for these professional stages veered from tradition and started experimenting. We cannot hold anybody responsible for it. It was a challenge that the time posed. It was necessary to leave the beaten track and confront the challenge; otherwise, we could not have been able to introduce novelty in our creations.
How would you paint the our State’s present theatre scenario?
The theatre scenario in present day tells a flattering tale in the ears of the dramatists and the audience. The encouragement and the financial assistance of the State Government to theatre troupes and groups have encouraged the present trend. You can’t name a place where there is no theatre troupe. The theatres are staged, not only enacted, at the pan-Indian level. Other Indian dramas and theatres are also staged in our State. It’s a new era in the theatre promotion scenario in our times.
What is unique about your plotlines?
The theatre visitors as common men and women always want something startling, anew. As a playwright, I prefer to concentrate on this angle. I want to create something novel to arrest the attention of the viewers. That has enabled my plotlines to hook the audience’s attention. I always try to present the critical themes and thoughts in a lucid manner. I have to go through a lot of screening and experimentation to captivate my audience’s interest. Besides, my success rests on the fact that my stories are created and recreated out of the common stories concerning the lives of common man and their characters.
How much space do Odia plays occupy on the national arena?
There is a good sign that Odia plays are translated into other Indian languages being staged in theatres at the pan-Indian scenario. Of course, they are not that resounding at this point of time; but one day, Odia plays will certainly make their compelling presence felt on the national arena. For example, the plays written by Nalini Nihar Nayak entitled “Byaghrarohan” (based on the original story of Manoj Das) and my play “Ghinua” (based on the original “Shikar” of Bhagabati Charan Panigrahi) hugged limelight being staged at the International Theatre Festival, New Delhi in 2016. Thereafter, every year, an Odia play is picked up to be staged here which has become a tradition by now. If all Odia playwrights try on this direction then every year Odia plays shall undoubtedly have their irresistible presence on the national arena.
What's your view on the critical writing on drama and theatre in the history of our literary tradition?
The climate of critical writing on drama and theatre here is not sunnier at all. Most of those who are writing in this genre seem to have a little understanding of the medium. They forget that plays are not for perusing but for presentation on the stage. They start reviewing plays before they grasp the carpentry of this craft. Writing synopsis is what they understand by reviewing a play. They seem to forget the visual world of stage while probing the plays on the pages. A play can well be assessed on the basis of its literary value as well as its stage-adaptability. It’s a collaborative art. It is a mode of fiction which is different from novels and stories. Unlike these, it has three kinds of denouement, namely, denouement of the narrative, denouement of character and denouement of the drama. To be a critic, one needs to learn the crucial component of the play propounded by our tradition as well as the trends and tenets of Western and English practices.