Three-day theatre festival ends

GAYA: The three-day long theatre festival jointly organized by the Abhinav Rang Mandal, Ujjain, and the Renaissance Cultural Centre, Gaya, ended on Sunday evening.
The Mandal presented three comic plays during the festival. Before the concluding function, Ujjain artists and Gaya art lovers paid tributes to evergreen Bollywood star Dev Anand and a two-minute silence was observed in the late star’s memory.
`Miyan Ki Jooti’, the comic play based on Mauler’s story, also contained two hit songs of Devanand movies including the `Abhi Na Jao Chor kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin’ number. Miyan Ki Jooti, part of a popular saying, portrayed the plight of mismatch marriages between an elderly man and a teenage girl. The play also depicted how smart women can turn the tables on gullible men and intelligently retrieve themselves from acutely embarrassing situations.
The characters, too, were named in accordance with their role, including Ghar Bigar Khan (home breaker), Uljhan (mystery), Mirza Barbad (ruined man) and Diljan (beloved).
Though somewhat overt and crude, the comedy kept a capacity audience laughing and giggling all through the 70 minutes long play in which loaded dialogues and their simple interpretations made it all the more interesting. The Miyan Ki Jooti cast included Virendra Nathanial playing Mirza Barbad Qureishi, Bhushan Jain as Ghar Bigar Khan and Smirti Narware as the much sought after Diljan.
The other two plays presented during the festival were `Are Sharif Log’ and ` Bichchhu’. At the end of the festival, Sharad Sharma, director of all the three plays and the moving spirit behind Abhinav Rang Mandal, made an open offer to Renaissance president Sanjay Sahay to utilize the services of Mandal artists for his (Sahay’s) future presentations.
Agreeing to this, Sahay hoped that the collaboration between Renaissance and Mandal, would continue.