Nautanki Theatre, now in its seventh year of existence, put on its annual South Asian Theatre Mela at Riverside Theatre Paramatta on 3rd and 4th Nov 2022, showcasing two plays, namely Your Choice and Chains of Freedom, with a focus on South Asian women directors.

Nautanki Theatre Company is a Western Sydney based organisation that works for cultural development, community engagement, education, and training through live performing theatre.

Nautanki’s South Asian Theatre Mela is a significant grassroots outreach allowing discovery of artists and creatives. The performances are bilingual, original or adaptations and may include music and dance.

Said Neel Banerjee, the founder, and Creative Director of Nautanki Theatre, “Nautanki’s aim is to produce creative opportunities with a true representation of contemporary Australia and provide equal access to everyone, especially with the CaLD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) community, refugee or migrant people facilitating social inclusion, creating a voice to vanguard their cultural identity.”

“Nautanki Theatre provides artistic platforms for emerging talents with ethnic backgrounds, telling alternate and new stories from CaLD communities. Currently the company’s artistic focus lies in storytelling that connects contemporary Australian society to South Asian diaspora.”

YOUR CHOICE, written and directed by Jyotsna Jyoti, travels along the familiar beaten path of feminism and patriarchy. It is the story of Ajay, a patriarchal man, and his docile wife Meera. After living under his patriarchal control for 20 long years, Meera calls it quits one day and walks away from the marriage to a happy life. The play offers a simplistic message to all women: Be a feminist, make your own choices and abandon marriages if it doesn’t work.

The data from 2019 shows that the average marriage in Australia lasts for 12.2 years. India has the least divorce cases, but its divorce rate is increasing in recent times, which is positive news, from the feministic viewpoint.

It would be interesting for the theatre to explore the issues faced by family members post breakup and the effects it has on society, as a follow up story.

On a brighter note, there are promising signs out of India, which is widely considered to be a patriarchal society. Some examples: The highest position in the land, i.e., President of India, is occupied by a woman. There is now equal pay for men & women cricketers; Indian women cricketers are now paid the same match fee as Virat Kohli. Women empowerment is all the rage with women in charge of businesses and corporations etc.

Urban India paints a different picture with reference to patriarchy though. It has enthusiastically embraced Western culture and its values. Live-in relationships, single mother families, pre-marital sex, extra-marital affairs, dating, clubbing, binge drinking, drug use, casual sex, porn etc. are commonplace, and are no more, taboo or alien to Indian women. Bollywood women are as Western as they can come.

Theatre has an excellent opportunity to portray this changing face of India, free of patriarchy, in its stage productions.

The cast of Your Choice consisted of Sudhanshu Vachaspati, Archana Misra, Rekha Rajvanshi, Ajay Kumar, Akanksha Srivastava.

The crew consisted of Naishadh Somaiya (lights), Avijit Sarkar (music), Tushar Bose (sound), Meera Rajgopalan (backstage support), Sandhya Bose and Amarendra Rakesh.

CHAINS OF FREEDOM, a woman-centric play, directed by Bobby Mallick, is the story of five women who each have unresolved issues bubbling within them.

On one night, in a residential colony in Pune, India, the five women are brought together into the same room, as if destined to, when a power outage in their building causes chaos. Blanketed by darkness, the women are panic-stricken. They go looking for Mahindra, the colony security guard, who is not to be found for some time.

In the meanwhile, the five women come to face with each other. Each one has her own grievances to air and their internal demons to deal with. It is as if the darkness was a catalyst which enabled them to release all their dark and deeply hidden suppressed thoughts and express them freely.

Mahindra appears all of a sudden and talks to each woman separately. He patiently listens to their inner thoughts & feelings, counsels them on how to deal with them and at the end of the conversation each of the women feels that her burden has been lifted and she feels liberated. Mahindra manages to dispel the darkness within them by helping them to re-kindle their own inner light.

To add a twist to the story, it is learnt that Mahindra had died in an electrocution accident, while trying to save a cat, hours before

The cast of Chains of Freedom consisted of Neela Bhole, Rima Sen, Mansi Bhatt, Saral Somaiya, Ananya Dixit, Rushi Dave.

The crew consisted of Esha Desai (writer), Sagar Agashay (lights), Sameer Bhole (sound/music), Mani Dixit (backstage support) and Trupti Oza.

All actors, from both plays, excelled in their roles and excellent support was provided by their crew members in stage setup, music, and lighting.

In order to strike an even balance in addressing social issues, hoping men’s issues such as depression & anxiety, stress, health, suicides, domestic violence against men, midlife crisis, addiction, PTSD etc. will be tackled in the plays to come.

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Nautanki Theatre, now in its 7️⃣th year, put on its annual South Asian #Theatre Mela at Riverside Theatre Paramatta on 3 & 4 Nov, showcasing 2 #plays, namely 'Your Choice' & 'Chains of Freedom', with a focus on South Asian women directors. #TheIndianSunhttps://t.co/CZbWVepo1G

— The Indian Sun (@The_Indian_Sun) November 5, 2022

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