Shabda Ranga, a baby organisation as on date, was founded with the sole aim to bring the fiction writer(including playwrights) and the theater director together on stage. The intention was to project and popularize both the above domains collaborating with each other. The founders of ‘Shabda Ranga’ have earned recognition, both, in verbs & visuals, in drama & design and in page & stage.
Unforgettable stories, novels and plays written in any language are testimony to the rich legacy of that language. Odia, being a classical language, is no exception, rather it’s miles ahead of other modern Indian languages, with national and international recognitions.
Any language survives and prospers mostly through its literature. Any literature(in any language) retains contemporaneity & remains alive for hundreds and thousands of years on this planet, if it is adored, used & often referred to by it’s users in their daily life transactions. Be it Shakespeare, be it Kalidas or be it Fakir Mohan, their literary accomplishments are time independent, hence are pertinent & appealing even today and will remain so in far future too.
Inertia & inaction have been the greatest hindrances in popularizing our own master pieces written in Odia within the geographical territory & beyond. Being the 1st Indian state formed on the basis of language, the regional literature has not drawn much of critic’s attention compared to literature of other Indian languages.
Plays are less considered as a prominent segment of literature and playwrights as mainstream writers. In order to bridge the gap between the above two units, ‘shabdaranga’ was born. The title literally means the confluence of words(literature) & colour(presentation or performance). It’s a cooperative mission aimed at transforming literary master pieces (stories, novels, poetry) to fit to stage performance through enactment. Sabda Ranga is a forum of writers, playwrights, theater directors, actors, musicians and nonetheless voluntary promoters of art, literature & culture of the state.
Eminent Odia writer of national repute Dr Gourahari Das, translator Ms Ratnamala Swain, theater directors like Subodh Patnaik, Avinna Routray & Darpa Narayan Sethy are few among the prominent founding members of the organisation. Theater groups like Life-Line, Natya Chetana & Shabda Ranga itself are among the few which are selflessly committed to promote, propagate & popularize representative Odia stories & novels, both old and contemporary, by adapting those into plays and staging those in prominent auditoriums on regular basis. After inception, the organization’s activities were thwarted for more than two years due to the corona pandemic.
A 3-days theater festival at Ravindra Mandap, Bhubaneswar was held recently(on 11th, 12th & 13th May, 2023) under the aegis of SHABDA RANGA.
The worth mentioning fact about the just concluded festival was, like film lovers, spectators were buying tickets to watch the plays. Response from the theater lovers was unimaginably inspiring as none of the shows ran with any vacant seats in the auditorium.
The first play (on 11. 05. 2023) was ‘Ashadh ka ek Din’ (a day in monsoon), originally written in Hindi by noted playwright Mohan Rakesh way back in 1958, adapted into Odia language by Ratnamala Swain, staged by Jeevan Rekha Theater group and directed by noted director of present time Sri Avinna Routray.
The play revolves around the love life of Kalidas, the great ancient poet of India(Ujjayinee). The subtle depiction and precise portrayal of the dilemma between the alluring throne & the intense urge for the beloved, who was abandoned by Kalidas for the sake of the throne kept the audience glued to the stage. The turns & twists employed in the play could mesmerise the spectators for more than two & half hours. The costume had mythological fervour, the stage design was nearly exacting the ancient Indian life style. Casting of characters was appropriated to match the merit of the play. Sound & light curation was realistic & artistic at the same time.
2nd day’s play was AABU(lump), adapted from the famous story Abu Purusha of the world famous Odia fictionist Sri Manoj Das. Script, screenplay and direction was taken care of by Sri Subodh Patnaik, the renowned theater director of national and international repute & recognition.
The story line of the play bears significant pertinence in present-day society as shameless competition to commercialise every aspect of human life, even an abnormality is gaining momentum undermining the dignity & grace, empathy & sensibility for human beings. The play revolves around a lump(aabu) developed on the skull of a boy, that turns him to a laughing stock among his friends & acquaintances and makes his daily life miserable. Later, when the same lump is glorified by medical experts as the largest of its kind in the whole world, reporters & various advertisement agencies tried their best and succeeded in using this physiological abnormality of the person to promote their products. As a result, the protagonist became famous & rich. It so happened that the protagonist, who was admitted in a hospital and was about to undergo a surgery to get rid of that lump, suffered a psychological breakdown when the same lump gradually diminished in size and disappeared automatically without medical intervention. The underlying satire hidden in the play to point out many such invisible lumps(deformities) in human attitude and character was effectively projected by the director.
The remarkable factors that made the play stand apart among others was it’s stage design & stage management, properties used and metaphoric illustration of the deep rooted human desire of earning name & fame, even from deformities & abnormalities. It was truly a magnificent play with all basic theatrical aspects appropriated prudently & precisely all throughout.
Photo Credit: Pabitra Mohan Kar
The 3rd & final presentation of the festival was a play titled ‘Aama Ghara Naxaa'(layout plan of our dream home). It was written by one of the iconic Odia writers of present time Dr Gourahari Das, directed by Sri Darpanarayan Sethy and was produced by Shabda Ranga itself.
It was a social play, very effectively delineating the slackening of the fundamental fabric & cohesive bond in the family, which is the fundamental unit of the civilisation. This devaluation in the families are the outcomes of the self centric ambitions developed among the 2nd generation descendants, fuelled by their spouses. Desire to acquire and accumulate at the cost of parental obligation is playing a spoilsport in such dismantling & fragmenting of the erstwhile well knitted families. Emotion & empathy are now alien and treated as old fashioned attributes.
Such unfortunate developments are happening in most of the modern families and it was very effectively portrayed in this play. Most of the Scenes were so lively that spectators were left in sighs & tears.
The protagonist is a senior citizen, retired from service and had lost his wife years ago. He had a dream of constructing his own house on the piece of his parental land. The existing house was destroyed due to super cyclone, after which he was staying with his son, working in the city. Neither of the sons endorsed his wish of constructing a house in their village. The devilish influence of the daughters in law in such delicate family matters was superbly portrayed on stage. The old man, who was staying with his younger son in Rourkela, was found missing oneday. After relentless search operations by both the sons, he was finally traced in their own remote village. As a shocking climax, he was found dead in the same piece of land, on which, he had been nurturing a dream to construct his own house. The shock intensified when the layout design of the dream house was in the hand of the dead oldman.
The festival was undoubtedly a thumping success for shabda ranga in selecting scripts, casting characters & the toil of the director. Buying tickets to watch a play will be an acceptable custom of the quality of performance on stage would be entertaining & enriching through shabda & ranga.
