For Jashn-e-Azhar 2026, Little Thespian invited three Hindi groups from outside Kolkata. Ekrang (Mumbai) paid homage to Badal Sircar with Pratibha Agrawal’s faithful translation, Paglā Ghodā, directed by Jayant Deshmukh. Sircar’s confessional of male irresponsibility towards women occurs as four inebriated men share with one another their maltreatment of important women in their pasts, through ego, guilt, social conformism and abject silence respectively. The suicide of the heroine they have brought for cremation fades as they go back unchanged to their patriarchal lives.
The two older and two younger men receive individualized portrayals from Mahendra Raghuvanshi, Anil Dubey, Aditya Singh Raghuwanshi and Soman Chouhan. But Shubhangini Shrivas cannot capitalize on the variegated personality of the woman’s spirit, especially when she hears the last man’s surprise revelation, and gets even more hampered by habitual dropped endings in speaking her dialogue. Deshmukh, reputed for his stage design, does not give this set much distinction beyond functionality.
Ashirwad Rangmandal (Begusarai) returned to Jashn-e-Azhar with Pashmina, Mrinal Mathur’s play that has become a recent favourite among Hindi groups nationwide. Our own Rangakarmee has a moving production of it running currently, so viewers could compare. Director Amit Roushan keeps the original one-hour text, using a basic, spartan set, whereas Rangakarmee expanded it by adding supernumeraries, songs and dances to evoke a Kashmiri atmosphere. Either way, the touching drama remains powerful, showing how human goodness transcends religious divides. Mathur’s contrast between the tourist couples stays intact as Sachin Kumar and Rintu Kumari (the soldier’s parents) and Mohit Mohan and Ritu Kumari (the crass but comic nouveau riche) exemplify the extremes of society.
Vivechana Rangmandal (Jabalpur) also returned, with Satyanarayan Patel’s story Par Pāzeb Na Bhige, dramatized by Alankriti Shrivastava from a simple folktale about a Banjara salt merchant who fell for a girl at a fair, who laid down conditions to fulfil if he wanted to marry her. Co-directors Pragati and Vivek Pandey deploy much colour, music and dance in representing Banjaras, but make the production virtually a one-woman show for the narrator, Shrivastava, because the rest of the cast mostly mime the motions in tableaux style. The folk roots demanded that the singers and instrumentalists (otherwise directed well by Rajvardhan Patel) sit on stage, rather than relegated into the invisibility of the wings.
(7 April 2026)