The collage of short stories was staged in a new theatre form to celebrate the centenary of the Kashmir born Pakistani-Urdu writer Saadat Hassan Manto in Indiranagar.

‘Bharathi’, a home turned into a new theatre space in Indiranagar gave way to a new form of theatre. The collage of short stories titled 'Asalamualaikkum Manto Sabeb' was staged to celebrate the centenary of the Kashmir born Pakistani-Urdu writer Saadat Hassan Manto. The creative venture from the Delhi based theatre director Kamal Pruthi and Bangalore based Deepak Srinivasan, was appreciated by all when several literary works of Manto were performed in nine different Indian languages including Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Avadhi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and English by a group of semi professional and new-bee artists in an unconventional theatre style.

Katha Collage

Manto's stories based on Indo-Pak partition, the sense of humor, sarcasm and irony of which is well admired in the Urdu literature, found a new flavor than ever before when it was presented in nine Indian languages and performed by native speakers of the language.

Museum Theatre

At Museum Theatre, the first of its kind, Kamal goes on to say, "It is a kind of performance in which, the audience, apart from being seated comfortably, can watch the show, walk along the expanse of performance space and go through a short journey and become a part of the performance. It is as if you watch a television show and one fine day you get the opportunity to enter into the television set. Won't it be wonderful? This is the kind of experience we want our audience to have."

Performance par excellence

The show ended by the scintillating performance by the director-actor, Kamal Pruthi's solo performance of 'Toba Tek Singh', the most admired works of Manto. The sparks of innovation that ignited the conscience surprised the audience.

Journey within the space

Deepak, who is also the founder of 'Bharathi', speaks on the performance arena, "This was the first event at Bharathi, and the vision of this place is a community center in addition to being a private living space. There are periodic community exchanges, primarily through performance and rituals, rituals that include food, traditional sharing of ideology, courtship rituals, and other such things," he said.

"It is high time we come out from the conventional sets of audience being an external entity of the play," says Kamal. Here the relation between the performer and audience is much more direct, intimate and strong. Such a theatre form is seldom been performed anywhere. We hope to present more and more of such performances. In fact, we are working on more scripts for similar performances and looking for more and more invites and performers, quips Kamal.