Kathmandu:

It was a month away from home for 22 artistes from the Aarohan Theatre Group. They have only recently come back after weaving their magic on stage across India. From Tripura to Kolkata to New Delhi to Bangalore, the group staged plays as diverse as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to Abhi Subedi’s Aaruka Phoolka Sapana. They also staged Agniko Katha in Kolkata and in three places in Tripura.

The group had been invited to participate in the eighth annual theatre festival — Bharat Ranga Mahotsav — organised by the National School of Drama from January 2-14 at New Delhi. Sixty plays from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Japan, China, Pakistan Lebanon and South Korea were staged at the festival.

The Aarohan group staged Abhi Subedi’s Aaruka Phoolka Sapana, which was directed by Sunil Pokharel.

“The hall could seat 600 and all tickets were sold out. But because of parallel staging going on, only 200-250 people could come for the show,” said Pokharel.

From this year, the NSD has initiated a parallel satellite festival in Banglore and 20 productions were selected to perform there. And our Aaruka Phoolka Sapana was one of the twenty.

“In Banglore, more than 600 people had come to see our performance. And because they had seen our earlier production Agniko Katha, they had high expectations from us,” said Pokharel, adding the response from the audience was equally good at the interaction following the play.

Why had they chosen Aaruka...? Pokharel said that as it is a long poem based on the Newari culture of Bhaktapur locality, they thought that no other play would do better to represent a part of our culture abroad.

Funded by the BP Koirala India-Nepal Foundation and NSD, Pokharel believes that such trips help the artistes grow and is critical for the development of theatre here.

Their West Bengal tour was more than satisfactory as Pokharel said, “In Kolkata, we found that we were better equipped and of a better standard in comparison to others.”

The organisers had invited people from the Nepali diplomatic mission in Kolkata and Pokharel said the people were happy to see a Nepali theatre group working as cultural ambassadors and this created a different image than what is generally held — of migrant workers from Nepal toiling at low-level jobs.

Not only the Kolkata audience, the group charmed the Beharampur locals with their take on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Tripura is one of India’s remote states and the group was a hit even there.

“In Tripura, people didn’t know anything about Nepal. At Agartala, there is a Gorkha Basti and people were very happy to see our performance and even asked us to come back again,” said Pokharel.

He added that some places were too dangerous to travel to that they had to be escorted by commandos. But he said was it was surprising to see a huge turn out even at such places.

Some practical tips that Pokharel shared were, “First — we should be used to extensive travelling and eating out. And second — such trips help develop better planning and production skills. Unlike performing at our own theatres where we can take our time to get the set ready, we had to do everything quickly as we only had one-and-a-half hours to prepare the set at the festival.”

Summing up the tour, he said, “One of the accomplishments of performing in other countries is that it helps us realise where we stand. We have realised that we are on the right track. And this increases the challenges to maintain the quality of our productions.”