Traditional artforms are a crowd-puller at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav this year. Iknoor Kaur finds out why
There was a time when people would wait to visit Mathura only to personally experience 10 hours nautanki. They would spend their holidays visiting the interiors of Maharashtra to enjoy tamasha or go all the way to Kashmir to watch the bhands lure the audience with their performing skills. But that is what people in the 70s and 80s did. Unfortunately today, half the Indian population is not willing to make an effort to explore them. However, it seems these lost artforms are now on the road to rejuvenation. This year’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav has more than just classical, contemporary and foreign theatre. Be it the Therukoothu of Tamil Nadu, the Purulia Chhau of West Bengal or the Shumang leela of Manipur, the festival has all of it under cover.
According to NSD professor Suresh Bhardwaj, the response to these plays marks a clear comeback of folklore. He said, “Folk art has its own charm. Even the way it connects with people is different. In the last decade and a half, such traditional artforms were neglected. However, ever since they made a comeback in films, people have started enjoying them again. We are running all our folk performances on houseful currently.”
A lot of these artforms originate from the interiors. Anoop Ranjan Pandey’s Bastarband was an example of that. Originated from the Bastar area of Chattisgarh, the play aimed at preserving and presenting the age-old musical and folk traditions of Bastar. “I think when the roots are strong, nothing can ever die. So is the case with folk art. It may go away for a while, but it always comes back. Our effort as performers is that in this transition period, the essence of the artform shouldn’t fade away. So what I present a reflection of Bastar and its traditional musical instruments in its most authentic way. This artform has been eroding even in the region because all you hear in Bastar now is gunfire. Thus, I brought together all the non-synthetic musical instruments that define the folklore of the area on one stage,” shared Pandey. The involvement of the youth in these folk performances is a refreshing sight. Director of Therukoothu, Shri Sambandan feels that a major part of the youth is taking to folk art in order to understand their roots better. He elaborated, “Folk art is usually connected with rituals. I have noticed that a lot of youngsters are taking to it only to understand these rituals. They feel that it is an easier way to understand their culture rather than reading scriptures. That is why a lot of folk art in the North is musical and in the South is performance-oriented.”
On the flipside, Bhardwaj thinks that “the youth may not be too attracted to folk at the moment. There needs to be a give and take. We need to keep updating folk art without changing it. This is slowly coming in with the use of technology in the performances,” he informed.
So far, the highlight in folk art through the last five days of the Mahotsav has been nautanki by Krishanswaroop Pachauri. Some folk performances to look out for on the festival calendar are Bhand Pather today, Purulia Chhau on January 11, Shumang leela on January 13, Therukoothu on January 15, Bhavai on January 17 and Dashavataar on January 18.
What comes as a pleasant surprise is that the festival closes on January 19 with a folk performance, Tamasha by Sambhaji Raje Jadhav. “We wanted to cover an entire spectrum in the festival. So we started with a classical play Chhaya Shakuntalam by Kalidas, put various categories of plays in the middle and ended with folk. It was also our way of projecting the two fading artforms — classical and folk,” Bhardwaj concluded.