Natya Chetana joins hands for environmental awareness

The Pioneer, June 12, 2009
PNS | Bhubaneswar

Natya Chetana, a leading theatre organisation of the State, represented in national and international platforms, has developed a new Oriya play Bana (The Forest). This time, Natya Chetana has a focused grassroots exposure by living in some remote villages to feel the forest and forest dwellers, the tribal population. The survey team visited Angul and Kandhamal districts beyond its past experiences within almost all tribal pockets of the State.

In deeper area of Pallahara near Angul an old-man opposed a young tribal man, who wanted to blame elephant and projected elephant as an enemy of the human beings. The old man’s argument was that there was no evidence of elephant destroying cultivated land before 10 years.

Elephants were rather friends of human beings in many ways. When we revolt badly if our neighbour enters one foot to our land, where as the elephant is merciful enough just to destroy the cultivated land to eat in exchange of the damage made by human beings to its resting place and food, which is ‘forest’. Likewise in Kandhamal, after the violence, during a peace movement meeting, another old man, who is a panchayat leader, but a Christian by religion, warned: “We must think why the human beings are afraid of human beings and prefer to take shelter nights together in the deep forest living with wild and dangerous animals. Is there any instance that the same species of creature is afraid of the same species and taking a shelter with another species.

For example — Is a cat being afraid of another cat, taking shelter within dogs? Is a parrot being afraid of another parrot, taking shelter among the crows?” These two statements got added with the exhibited skeleton of Sankar, the elephant in the Regional Museum of Natural History in Bhubaneswar. The description in front of the skeleton says, how the elephant was found to be very violent, killed some people, destroyed valuables, finally caught by the Forest Department, which left it in Similipal sanctuary, but Sankar died after few months.

When the Museum wished to keep its skeleton, it got the dead body, processed it and found a 32 gramme bullet in its chest rib. The description further extends with a line that — one must suspect the cause to be an attempt to kill for getting its tusk. As there is no evidence, it is deemed to be a misfire when attempting to kill other animal.

The play is highlighting the issue of deforestation, forest rights, rights of the wild animals, role of the Government structure, the eyes of multinationals on occupying forest land for mining projects, the role of politicians elected from the same tribal community, the politics of religion to occupy the forest region, the emotional crisis faced by common mass. The play is written in a form to establish that the human beings of the society are also behaving like different animals of the forest. We all are under different masks of other creatures. The unique feature of the script is that the characters are transformed to behave like animals and also human characters to show the behavioural similarities. Finally, the elephant is projected as the symbol of the ‘unity’ and the victims must address their problems being united. This is the message of the play to resolve forest problems.

Young lady director Sujata is encouraged by Natya Chetana to direct its one of the annual theatre productions, which will move in the State to perform in the coming days. She has followed the principal features discovered by Natya Chetana to establish the style as a Modern Indian Theatre style. The play is performed under a constant flat light for 1 hour 20 minutes on stage.

An interesting photo exhibition is there projecting the research and compositions of the play at the entrance for the audience’s education. One can relate the scenes, settings and costume with the research materials.

The play is written by Subodh and directed by Sujata Priyambada. The group composition is having special features like — One actor from Kandhamal, One from Nabarangpur, One from Jharsuguda, One from Sonepur, two for the first time in theatre from Kalahandi and one actress from the Netherlands. The backstage helping hands are Prahallad, Jyotiranjan, Nirupama and Prasanna.

The team celebrated World Environment Day on June 5.

Vasundhara, a leading NGO working on the forests and living farms, another NGO working against GM seeds and environment, have joined hands for the celebration in Bhubaneswar. There are other organisations like Jagruti, Seba Jagat, Zilla Unnayan Parishad, Boudh, TAS, Sonepur, Paribartan and Ananda Mission providing local support. The drive is encouraged by National Adivasi Alliance which is a national forum committed for getting benefit out of forest rights.