Sanyasi - A Play by Manipuri Ensemble

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A Scenes from Manipuri Ensemble's Sanyasi :: Picture Credit - Bunti Phurailatpam

MANIPUR ENSEMBLE
Play : Sanyasi
Date : March 24, 2012

About the Play

The Manipuri version of the Rabindra Nath Tagore is adapted from "The Ascetic" as translated by the poet himself in English. It is symbolic play expressing mans quest for love and the purpose of life. Man is a slave of Nature. He cannot free himself from its precarious laws of life and death. Life's dream remains unsatisfied eternally everywhere. It leads us from the unreal to the real -the infinite truth of the finite.

A Sanyasi is living a pious lonely life like fighting a war of suicide. For him the stream of life has stopped. He tries to emancipate himself from desires and hungers by chanting incantation of nothingness. But his world becomes small and confined by the lines of horizon.

In reality life is felt ever changing. Young women grow older. The inert soul is invisible and cannot be judged by the bodily forms. In villages, some of the villagers feel themselves bigger than their fellows and insult them forgetting that they are sure to get their own death.

Students are also undergoing trivial discussions and absurd ideas without conforming to the true knowledge of the world. Flower girls are singing desperate songs of lost love. King's soldiers drive away poor beggers from the road. In such millues Raghu's daughter, Vasanti, who is cast off by all the people on the plea that her father was an atheist comes to the Sanyasi, begging for her shelter near him. But he deserted her. He has not granted shelter even to a weary traveler.

Three bearers bring in a sleeping man, Binde, thinking that he is dead and are trying to perform the rite of his death. Sleeping man swears them that he is really alive. They have forcibly carried away him. In the meantime the Sanyasi sees Vasanti sleeping on the roadside and goes of leaving her alone.

Three men are coaxing a woman, who rejected their proposal. On the other hand Basanti is hankering after the Sanyasi's love. His love is enough for her yet he abandons it. Even a shepherd is expressing his feeling for love on the onset of spring. Now the earthly love awakens in the heart of the Sanyasi. He is eager to meet Raghu's daughter, Vasanti, again. The girl whom he comes across not Vasanti and she is a daughter of a missing father who collects sticks from the forest.

He now fascinates the life of a women having a family and her children. He turns a new page of life and becomes desperate with the memories of his life with Vasanti and pines for her love. He is asking everybody he met about Vasanti's where about. Some says she has left her village. Finally she is reported been died. The Sanyasi is screaming desolate that Vasanti can never be dead.

Director's Note:

It is an attempt to add a new taste in performance using indigenous form of Performing Arts. Emphasis is giving to instilling the science of theatre among the actors and empowering them the strength of exteriorizing their inner truth in performance.

About the group: Manipuri Ensemble is a Professional Theatre Repertory where eminent gurus work jointly for the promotion and dissemination of Manipuri Culture. For the time being the Repertory concentrates its activities in theatre and striving practically and theatrically for a new language of theatre which should be indigenous to our regional roots.

Theatre in Education or TIE in short, is a field work programme taken up at present and numerous children from different primary school and different social, cultural and economic background are engaged in the creative process of children theatre.

The Manipuri Ensemble stands for a strong theatre movement in this region and for the establishment of a creative awareness of the local traditions and the milieu.

The Repertory has organised theatre workshops every year at state level including tribal theatre and children theatre workshop in Manipur since 1987 and produced many commendable plays including tribal plays and children's play like Oedipus Rex, Coucacian Chalk Circle, The Fire and The Rain, Medea, Good Women of Santzuan, Hayavandana, Ghasiram Kotwal, Numit Kappa, Henjunaha, Mathangi Yeningthada; Katini Kazini (Mao dialect), Hundung Khullakpagi Machanupi (in Tangkhul dialect), Hringthem (on Anal dialect).

A Scenes from Manipuri Ensemble's Sanyasi :: Picture Credit - Bunti Phurailatpam

About the Director:

The young and energetic Artistic Director Shri Kshetrimayum Jugindro Singh, popularly known as Kshetri Jugindro, took his diploma from National School of Drama, New Delhi in 1986. He also holds diploma in Manipuri Martial Arts. He had received Manipur State Kala Akademi Award, 2005.

He began his Theatrical career at a tender age of eleven and since then he never looks back. He has acted in more than forty plays since 1969 and so far directed thirty four plays productions to his credit. Many of his plays received rave reviews and prestigious award from many Competitions and Festivals. He has also written over 15 (fifteen) plays in Manipuri which had already been successfully staged at various Festivals by different theatre groups. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Manipuri Ensemble.

His main aim is to explore the potentialities of Manipur Actor vis-a-vis modern theatre by organising theatre Workshop etc. Promotion and dissemination of tribal art and culture of Manipur through the medium of theatre is also one of his cherished dreams.

He visited USSR in connection with the India Festival held there and Participated in the 41st Edinburgh International Theatre Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, Theatre Festivals in the United kingdom (UK), Netherlands, Belgium, China, Japan, U.S.A., New Zealand, German, etc. He also participated in the Dublin Theatre Festival held in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

Cast:

1. Sanyasi - H. Roshnichand Meitei
2. Basanti - P. Premita Devi
3. Co-Actors - S. Kolendrajit, W. Pepe, W. Rojita
- B. Memi, Kh. Kenedi, Kh. Subhajir
- Kh. Matouleibi, Kh. Thoi,
- O. Kiranbala, O. Renuka,
- Y. Ranjitkumar, N. Surjit,
- Y Rajdhon, The, Manoranjan,

Credits :

1. Costume - B. Memi Devi, O. Kiranbala Devi,
2. Light - N. Surjit Singh.
3. Set & Props. - L. Ibochouba
- - Y. Ranjit Singh & K. Chitranjan
4. Music - M. Khogen with S. Santosh
- W. Bikram, Y. Rajdhon.
5. Make-up - O. Renuka
6. Brochure & Exhibition - O. Khogen
7. Play Back - Devendrajit Sharma, Th. Shantibala Devi
8. Script - Rabindra Nath Tagore
9. Translated into Manipuri - Kshetri Sanajaoba
10. Stage Manager - S. Kolendrajit Singh
11. Design & Direction - Kshetri Jugindro
12. Production - Manipuri Ensemble, Imphal