Set in a backdrop of red and black, a mesmerising tale of love, lust, demons and deceit enchanted its audience seated at National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) recently....
theatre
William Dafoe rightly said that “With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.” Theatre has such a vibrant ability to not just bring the words to life but it can also make emotions feel palpable. And some tales transgress the bounds of time and space and don’t age even after they have been retold a number of times.
Set in a backdrop of red and black, a mesmerising tale of love, lust, demons and deceit enchanted its audience seated at National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) recently.
The play ‘Betaali Prem Katha’ was inspired by one of the ancient Sanskrit collection of tales Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of Rivers of Stories) by Somadeva. The story revolved around a young Brahmin man named Prem (Rahil Siddiqui). Prem is a knowledge seeker and in his search for wisdom he accidently wanders into a city called Roopnagar – a city that his father had severely warned him never to go. There, Prem meets a strange man, Betaal (Sunil Shanker), hanging off a tree. Betaal is actually a supernatural being who knows magic and has a knack for telling stories.
However, this time around, Betaal does something different. Instead of telling a story, he decides to mess with Prem and sends him on a quest where he turns into a woman Premlata (Shabana Faizan). On his quest, he falls in love with Rajkumari Chandrprabha (Iram Bashir), but when he meets her as Premlata, the situation takes an interesting turn. His gender-bending role becomes all the more intriguing when a man named Balram (Samhan Ghazi), despite being already married, falls for Premlata.
Written and directed by NAPA alumnus and current NAPA Repertory Theater Director, Fawad Khan, the play is a two-hour long script. When asked why the writer chose this particular story and genre, Fawad elucidates, “The real inspiration for the play came from reading the works of Intizar Hussain. At the time he started writing most writers like Manto, Krishn Chander, Ismat Chughtai were all writing in a form that have its roots in the west. They were inspired by Maupasant, Chekhov, Flaubert, Gorky etc. Intizar Hussain started looking for forms that were rooted in our culture. And he wrote stories in the way of the Sufis, Gautam Buddha, Mahabharat, Quran, Kathasaritsagara and even the way his grandmother used to tell stories. This was both a search for one’s own roots as well as an attempt at decolonising our literature. I thought of doing the same with theatre. All my theatre education at NAPA was very western and I wanted to look for forms that were closer to us. At the time of writing this play, I had nautanki-style musical in mind.
I don’t know how much I have succeeded in doing that; but that was the reason behind this project.”
The great thing about the play was that its end was open to interpretation. It left the audience with a lot to ponder and wanting more, for until next time…
– A. Jafri
