DEKH RAHE HAIN NAYAN
Dekh Rahe Hain Nayan - At A Glance
30th Aug - 1st Sep 2024
KCC Fourth Floor & Amphitheatre
KCC proudly presented "Dekh Rahe Hain Nayan", a three-day festival curated by MK Raina and Tausif Rahman, celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of legendary playwright and poet Habib Tanvir. The event honoured his transformative contributions to Indian theatre, art, and culture.
Through engaging performances, masterclass, and discussions, the festival brought Tanvir's enduring legacy to life. Audiences explored his profound impact on modern Indian theatre and storytelling.
Highlights:
- Captivating performances
- Exhibitions showcasing rare memorabilia
- Spellbinding readings and Dastangoi
- Thought-provoking panel discussions
- Insightful masterclasses
- Audiences from all walks of life celebrating Tanvir’s legacy
The Nationally-celebrated figures who joined us
It is a universal tradition to celebrate and honour the achievements of eminent individuals who have contributed to society, particularly if it is his or her centenary.
Habib Tanvir deserves to be so honoured and celebrated, because of his unique position in developing a truly indigenous post independent contemporary theatre in India. After the nation attained freedom it was essential to decolonize India from the weight of western ideas of culture. Habib Tanvir was unique in realizing that the new cultural landscape of a free India would come from the seeds of the indigenous resources that had survived over centuries and were preserved in the rural world of India, although many of them were rapidly growing extinct due to changing socioeconomic conditions.
He went deep into studying available indigenous cultural forms, learning, conserving, reviving and celebrating them by sharing them with the people. For years he worked with regional folk theatre performers and studied their methodologies of training in acting, music, and rituals. Through this study he discovered the richness and versatility of the indigenous Indian actor, who acts, dances, sings, plays instruments: in short, a multi-skilled actor. This definition of the Indian actor was also described in the ancient Natya Sashtra. While working with them he developed them into fully contemporary actors who could take up any theatrical text of the world and perform it with ease, be it Sanskrit, Greek, Russian or German. Meanwhile he was also creating a new theatrical form which had local texture, rhythm and colour.
As a playwright he wrote masterpieces like Agra Bazaar, Charandas Chor, Dekh Rahe Hain Nayan, Hirma Ki Kahani and many more. Because of their difference of form, content and structure these distinguished him as a playwright from the playwriting that was happening during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. He employed classical and folk formats to structure his stories, weaving into them the most contemporary social and political themes, often through entertaining and fun filled satire.
He was also a music expert and a poet. His poetry, while employing simple images and metaphors, digs deep into the psyche of the human condition in the contemporary Indian situation. He showed new ways of incorporating live music into theatre. The political dimension of his plays and performances explores the principle of the sacred through hard hitting irony while maintaining the fundamental humanity of his characters. The element of the sacred in his work is spiritual rather than religious,based on the dialectic of the material truths of the physical world.
He dedicated his life to working with the tribal performers of Chhattisgarh, where he grew up, and where he witnessed rural cultural life in all its colour and virtuosity. It is from here, with the Chhattisgarh Nacha performances, that he built his campaign of developing post-independent India’s new theatre, naming his troupe Naya Theatre, with its roots firmly grounded in the heat and dust of Chhattisgarh. Naya Theatre started touring for pan Indian performances and soon got invited to perform widely internationally.
Habib Tanvir took a theatre rooted in the world of indigenous spaces, with colour, singing, ritual and dance, and made it relevant to the national and the global stage as well. This is a unique contribution to the discourse of modernity in Indian art and culture: how to render the local, indigenous and the traditional simultaneously contemporary and global, in a fundamental way, without merely exploiting the exotic or colourful elements as decorative, illustrative or mere spectacle.
Habib Tanvir is no longer with us, but it is important to take a look at his life and work and to celebrate, honour and truly value his contribution to the world of theatre. This will be the first major initiative to take serious note of his service to the nation through multiple sessions including talks, demonstrations, panel discussions, films, an exhibition and performances. This will be a truly historical tribute to one of India’s most original and popular theatre persons in his centenary year.
- M.K. Raina
Post Event Images
Powered by 