(From The Hindu, 12/7.)
Freud of Theatre holds Delhiites
spellbound
The Delhi Ibsen Festival, which featured seven plays of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen this week, gave troupes a chance to experiment and adapt his works for contemporary audiences. The professional edition of the festival featured three plays by foreign troupes and one collaboration between a Polish director and a Kolkata troupe.
These included two by Pakistan’s Tehrik-e-Niswan Cultural Action Group and Uzbekistan’s Ilkhom
Theatre. Karachi’s Tehrik-e-Niswan (Women’s Movement) presented a South Asian proletarian interpretation of Ibsen’s A Doll House. Ibsen’s play, radical at its time, culminates in the female protagonist walking out of an unequal marriage.
The Karachi troupe attempted to explain how a woman in a conservative society is driven out of an institution like marriage that has come to define her existence. Sakina, the adapted character of Mrs. Linde, a friend of the protagonist Nora, is transformed in this adaptation named Gurrya ka Ghar.
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/theatre/festive-lab-of-ideas/article4174521.ece