STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: ‘Do Kalakaar’, a play in Hindi written by Bhagwati Charan Verma and directed by Balwant Thakur was staged here on Sunday 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 unsuccessful efforts to hold him back are made by them. When caught at the corner both take shelter of their creative mind and start making highly logical excuses to impress the landlord so he allows them to continue till they are able to realise their unfulfilled dreams.
Both sell him the dreams to an extent that the room rented out to them will become a museum. Finding the distance beyond measurement between their dreams and the 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 realisation 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.
Amit Raina as ‘Churamani’, Masood Qadir as ‘Martand’, Sachin Bamba as ‘Bulaki Dass’, Shekher Sharma as ‘Ram Nath and Mahikshit Singh Sambyal as ‘Parmanand’ performed their roles very well. Neeraj Kant executed the lights and sound. The show was coordinated by Mohammad Yaseen and Kritika Singh did the presentations.
