The Newscraving Desk
Srinagar, Mar 19:
Do Kalakaar, a play in Hindi written by Bhagwati Charan Verma and directed by Neeraj Kant was staged here today at Natrang Studio in its weekly Sunday Theatre series. Though coated with a thick layer of comedy, the play had a very relevant message to share with the audience which was revealed very artistically.
In the play, ‘Churamani’ and ‘Martand’ are two friends, both are artists (one poet and another painter) they had once aspired to rule the Bollywood with their respective creative strengths. The poet had dreamt of becoming the top Hindi Film lyricist and the painter had set a goal for himself to become the most sought after art director of the tinsel town. But destiny lands them in a situation where both are forced to use their creative energies in creating situations and cooking stories just to escape the harassment of their landlord who has not been paid the rentals of a dingy room for the last six months. The playwright has beautifully portrayed the tragic fate of the creative people who are expected to create magic and electrifying artistic experience through their unlimited creative energies are shown wasting their creativity just to ensure survival. The play opens at a situation where both the poet and the painter have locked themselves in a room which is being visited by the landlord to collect the rent from them. The landlord forcefully makes his entry despite all-out unsuccessful efforts to hold him back are made by them. When caught at the corner both take shelter of their creative mind and start cooking highly logical excuses to impress the landlord so he allows them to continue till they are able to realize their unfulfilled dreams.
Both sell him the dreams to the extent that the room rented out to them will once become a museum which once hosted the great genius of the world of poetry and painting. Finding the distance beyond measurement between their dreams and reality, the landlord refuses to buy their arguments and throws them out of the room to face further rejection and dejection of the society. Both the poet and the painter get this realization at this point of the time that despite having a civilization of thousand years at our back this world is not meant for creative people.
Sheryaar Salaria as ‘Churamani’, Amit Brahmi as ‘Martand’, Sumit Bandaral as ‘Bulaki Dass’, Hardik Sharma as ‘Ram Nath’, Abhimanyu Choudhary as ‘Parmanand’ and Palshin Dutta performed their roles very well. The lights of the play were executed by Neeraj Kant whereas the sound was rendered by Kushal Bhat. The show was coordinated by Mohd. Yaseen.