New Delhi, September 16: Kshetri Jugindro�s Nagamese play - Jina-Etiben enthralled the house-packed audience at Sriram Centre for Performing Arts Auditorium here on September 13 in the North East Children Theatre Festival organized by the National School of Drama from September 9-15. Four plays namely - Chutti (Arunachal Pradesh) directed by Akhilesh Khanna, Bhagawadajjukiam (Meghalaya) by Vijay Srivastava, Jina-Etiben (Nagaland) by Ksh Jugindro and Hurray (Tripura) by Adreeja Dasgupta participated in the Festival.

Regarding the production of the Jina-Etiben, the Director Kshetri Jugindro said that a 30-day theatre workshop was conducted at Dimapur from August 3 to September 3 recently under the auspices of the National School of Drama in collaboration with the North Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre.

Thirty children including 10 girls from Nagaland took part in the workshop.

The play �Jina-Etiben, a romantic folktale of the Ao Naga takes place in a village called Mopongchuket where Jina, a poor and coarse looking young man falls in love with Etiben, who, on the other hand, was beautiful, intelligent and very rich.

Etiben�s beauty was known throughout the Ao region and many rich and handsome suitors came to ask her hand in marriage but destiny had a different thing in store for her.

Jina charmed Etiben with a love charm and they became inseparable.

As time went by, the parents and every people in the village came to know of their relationship.

The relationship between Jina and Etiben was greatly resented by Etiben�s parents.

Suddenly Etiben was married off to Tenyur, a handsome and rich man from Sungratsu village.

But even marriage could not stop the love between Jina and Etiben.

They were determined to go to any extent to preserve their love.

Jina�s role enacted by Moatemso and Etiben�s role by Talisongla were indeed superb.

Traditional string instrument of Ao tribe was used in the play.

Clad in traditional Ao Naga attire, the cast of the play enthralled the audience which strongly suggested that drama and other traditional art forms could be polished and sustained in Nagaland.

Indeed, the play could give an aesthetic taste of Naga folklore to the audience.

Thanks to Kshetri Jugindro, an alumnus of National School of Drama who opened an avenue of Nagamese theatre in the fertile cultural soil of North East India.

The other plays were not the original plays of the States concerned though the directors added the local flavour to those plays.

About the play, the Director Jugindro said that it was an attempt to add a new taste in performance using indigenous forms of performing arts of Nagaland.

He gave emphasis to the children, who had never known any dramatic elements before instilling the science of theatre among the children and empowering them the strength of exteriorizing their inner truth in performance, he said.

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