City-based Circle Theatre Company is back after a gap of four years with a fresh adaptation of the first modern Hindi drama "Ashad Ka Ek Din," which was originally directed by Hindi litterateur Mohan Rakesh in 1958.
Set between 100 BCE and 400CE, the original work was a three-act play centred around few episodes from the life of classical Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, where he faces a conflicted state of mind and has to make a difficult choice between the woman he loves and his desire to achieve fame.
This adaptation by Bapi Bose of the Circle Theatre Company does not change much of the original structure, but rather attempts to "rediscover the reality of love."
"'Ashad Ka Ek Din' has always been an opportunity to rediscover multiple layers of grey areas for many, but for me it was an occasion to express a contemporary elucidation while re-discovering 'reality of love,'" Bose says.
"The play talks about a series of separation of conjoined souls and embodied environments, unattained fulfillment and the eternal search for the perfect creation," he says.
The play is not very different from the original in terms of the structure and the plot. Like the original, it is also divided into 3 acts.
The first act narrates Kalidas' amorous affair with Mallika, which is strongly disapproved by the latter's mother. Meanwhile, the poet has composed his first long poem 'Ritusambar' and is now widely recognised in the court of Ujjaini, following which, the king sends for him to brought to his kingdom.
In the second act, few years have passed and Kalidasa, now an accomplished poet is on his way to Kashmir with his queen, when he passes his old abode in the Valley, but decides not to see Mallika.
The final and the third act shows Kalidasa returning only to find Mallika unhappily married to a drunkard with a child. Kalidasa does not stay.
"The play has unending, rising contemporary questions and opened the possibilities of innumerable visual interpretation of different intensity," Bose says.
The play was staged at the Muktadhara auditorium here will on August 1 and August 2.
