Saw the play Jisne Lahore nahin dekhya woh janmya nahin
Link- http://www.artsopolis.com/event/detail/441101705/Jis_Lahore_Nai_Dekhya_O_Jamyai_Nai_Hindi_Play_with_English_Supertitles
Play was by nataak theatre a Sunnyvale based theater company. The play was written by Ashgar Wajahat and i had seen it before at India Habitat Center when it was performed by Naya theatre and Habib Tanvir was alive and in the play. Seen i had seen it before, naturally i was bound to compare but good news is that i do not remember Habib's play in detail (All i remember is that i was blown away by it and i had loved theater since then). But watching this one, it was a wonderful delight.
One things that stood out was people using thet punjabi in the play. Multani punjabi sunne ko bahut kam milti hai. Stage decor was quite good, what was missing was a background score. Habib ji's plays always had music in them. Acting was quite good and it was later only i realized that the actors where actually from a local theater group in Sunnyvale and they were all Indians settled in US. After the play, those very people were speaking english in a manner that they were out of some British movie, quite interesting to watch the contrast.
The theme of play is so strong, the lines are very well written and based on partition, homeland, home and underlying humanity in the play is so good. This play is a timeless classic and there will be many groups performing it. I will not reveal the story here.
The other interesting thing that the organizers did was to organize an informal stage after the play where they invited people from audience to share the stories of partition. Two people came to stage, one was 8 and other was 6 and half when partition happened. Their stories were quite sad and listening to first hand experience was very interesting to me.
As the organizers described their motive behind this - stories about partition are never written in books, they are not told to children, people do not talk about it, slowly and slowly this is fading from the minds of people and the newer generation have very little idea of this tragic incident. This is quite true and indeed sad.
More links -
http://www.naatak.com/current_event.html
http://www.facebook.com/Naatak
http://jis-lahore.blogspot.com/
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