Bhubaneswar: Five-day National Theatre Festival Purba Ranga began here at Rabindra Mandap, Monday. The event is being jointly organised by the State Culture Department in collaboration with Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre, Kolkata and Odisha Natya Sangh, a confederation of hundreds of theatre troupes.
Jyoti Prakash Panigrahi, the Minister for Odia Language, Literature and Culture inaugurated the event.
The other dignitaries present on the occasion included Energy and MSME Minister Dibya Sankar Mishra, Culture Department Director Ranjan Kumar Das, Odisha Sangeet Natak Akademi President Ramakrushna Sahoo and eminent theatre personality Prasanna Mishra.
City-based Jeevan Rekha Theatre troupe presented Odia play Sita on the first day of the festival. Written by late Ratiranjan Mishra, the play was designed and directed by Abhinna Routray.
The central character of the play is Sita but she is not the one from epic Ramayan. As the play progresses, she became the reason behind conflicts between four friends who had discovered her in the dead of night. But at the end, none of them succeeds to win her heart. The moral of the story is every woman should be treated with respect, not like an object.
“Apart from sending a message to the audience, the play has a style of its own. While we have presented it in Geetinatya format, the viewers can enjoy Chhau dance and folk music at various points of the play. However, the actors deliver contemporary dialogues,” said the play director Abhinna Routray.
Four Hindi plays will be staged in the next four days of the festival, added Routray.