 Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 5: The widows in Swati Dubey’s impressive production Agarbatti, are fictional figures who represent the widows of the upper-caste men killed in the Behmai massacre.
Indeed, the play opens with a scene from Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen in which a vengeful Phoolan Devi lines up the men who had gang-raped her and executes them almost at point-blank range. The state government made the tokenist gesture of bestowing the now destitute women with a beedi factory. In Dubey’s play, the site of an uncertain sustenance becomes an Agarbatti factory, which the play’s title alludes to.
The story starts from the place where the story actually ends with Phoolan's death. Nine characters relive the incidents and try to find out the truth behind the incident. When Phoolan went to jail after surrendering, it created a big chaos in the political segment as well as scheduled caste segment of society .Everybody wanted to show their sympathy, but no one was ready to help her out. This play also shows that if you can touch the sentiments of the public, you can touch great heights in politics
The incident is shown in the play with the help of fictional characters and incidents but the motive was to unfold the truth of casteism and how people used her for their own benefit. Playwright Ashish Pathak’s excellent script has a nuanced and considered approach that never swerves into melodrama or cliché, and gives almost every woman in a spirited ensemble a fleshed-out turn, and several dramatic high points.
The play effortlessly manages to connect the audience to the stories and emotions of its characters and peeps into the world through their perspective.
Presented on the fifth day of the ongoing Nutan International Theatre Festival, NITF-2020, Agarbatti from Samagam Rangmandal, Jabalpur created a magical aura on the stage and gathered unprecedented applause from the audience.
Only after the play is over that one realize the emotional journey he/she went through, and the intensity of subject it managed to portray.
Swati Dubey as Thakurain, Archana Mishra as Suman, Pooja Gupta as Parvati,, Shivanjali as Lajjo, Mansi as Damyanti , Megna Panchal as Kalli, Shaivi as Nanhi Bai as ashaivi produced scinitilallting performances equally supported by Utsav Hande, Harshit Singh, Arpit Singh, Shivakar Sapre, Sahil and Saurabh
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