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| Party convention versus cultural promotion | | Natrang’s mega theatre festival suffers as Abhinav Theatre accords priority to political convention | | Jammu | July 26
The ongoing fortnight long national theatre festival received a great jolt following closure of the Abbihnav Theatre, the venue of the festival, for a political convention on Friday.
The presentation of the play scheduled for today that was earlier feared to get postponed, was however carried late in the evening after the convention. Even as the play was staged, it was done without proper lighting and set designing. Even the artistes were not able to wear proper make-up for the play.
The happening has sent a wrong signal among the participants as also the viewers as they believe that both the Government and also the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages is more interested in organizing political conventions rather than allowing the festival to continue. Abbihnav theatre is primarily meant for cultural activities and holding political conventions, under byelaws is the last priority, the observers say.
However, for the Academy authorities the party convention today gained much more important than the ongoing cultural activity. Instead for promoting the culture, they are all set to discourage it which can be judged from the fact that the Abbhinav Theatre currently agog with national level theatre festival was closed down for the day to pave way for holding a convention by a political party.
The delay in today’s program was necessitated as the Congress Party organized a day long convention at Abbihnav Theatre thus disturbing the whole momentum of this historic event. Congress party boosting to protect and project the cause of Jammu is allegedly in fact sabotaging the on-going national level cultural festival. Observers felt that the Congress party instead of holding its convention at the Abbihnav Theatre should have selected some other venue for the purpose and allowed the festival to carry on as per the schedule.
Today, the group performed the play ‘Fandi’, which required regress rehearsal, time for decorating its sets and other technical requirements, but the proposed day long Congress had upset the scheduled program much to the inconvenience to the participating teams as also the viewers, the sources said.
When contacted, Natrang Director, Balwant Thakur, said, this program is an event of international significance which is certainly going to be disturbed. ‘We have no authority to stop misuse of power. We have no other option other than to suffer. I can only wish and pray that sense prevails to our political system’, he sarcastically remarked.
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