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| Kehar Singh Thakur features at Natrang’s National Theatre Talk Show | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, June 18: Sangeet Natak Akademi’s Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Awardee, theatre actor, director and playwright Kehar Singh Thakur featured today at Natrang’s National Theatre Talk Show, ‘Young Voices of Theatre’ at the Facebook page of Natrang Jammu where he shared his inspirational thoughts with the global audience. Director Natrang, Balwant Thakur complimented all the brilliant speakers of this distinctive talk show who are highly acclaimed because of their outstanding work and exclaimed that they all are contributing towards the cause of theatre by sharing their precious thoughts with people who may drive immense inspiration and learning from it.
Born and brought up in Kullu (Himachal Pradesh) Kehar Singh Thakur is a science graduate and PG Diploma holder in Journalism & Mass Communication. He learnt the nuances of theatre from late Amitava Dasgupta and also learnt basics of Kathak from classical dancer Noor Zaheer. Later he learned from eminent theatre personalities like K.N. Pannikar, Avtar Sahni, Rudra Prasad Sengupt, Balwant Thakur, Suman Kumar, Hanuman Prasad Yadav, Geeta Guha, Rajesh Sharma, V. K. Sharma and many more during several workshops. Sangeet Bhushan in Indian Classical Music (Vocal), Kehar has received Junior Fellowship in Theatre from Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India. Kehar Singh is consistently working on folk theatre forms of Himachal Pradesh, using narratives and folk elements in almost all his plays. A few of his plays with Himachali flavour include; Rabindra Nath Tagore’s ‘Raja’, Bhisham Sahani’s ‘Muaawze’, Raja Chatterji’s ‘Bhagwan Ka Poot’ and folktales like ‘Ghatotkuch’, ‘Nayan Bhari Talaiya’ and ‘Pathar ke Sainik’ etc. As a writer, his plays ‘Dugdh Dhenu’, ‘Chidiya ke Bahane’, ‘Rana Jheena’ and ‘Sunni Bhunku’ etc. too have folk elements and different theatre styles of Himachal in them. All his productions are the perfect amalgam of Himachali folk theatre forms and Brechtian style of theatre with modernity. Director of Active Monal Cultural Association Kullu, Kehar is presently working with children and young aspirants of the Valley. He also has a few films and TV serials to his credit.
In an enriching conversation with Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardee actor and Natrang’s senior artist Anil Tickoo, Kehar Singh threw light on his theatre journey which is grossly inspired from the elements of folk. He spoke in detail about the rich cultural heritage of Himachal Pradesh. He strongly believes that folk arts are always contemporary, it is not a thing of the past as most of the people tag them and also suggests to blend them with modernity at times to make it more applicable. Living at a place where there is no auditorium, thus ticketed performances are out of question, Kehar aspires to make theatre so relevant and important that it becomes a people-supported, people-managed activity. In his endeavour to promote theatre in his region he has initiated several activities, from 2012 he started an annual festival named Kullu Rang Mela, a 21 days festival in which artists of the group perform 7 plays (three shows of each play). Since then, it has been organised every year till the Corona crisis.
To spread theatre at the grass root level in Kullu, his group also conducts regular children theatre workshops especially for the students of government schools. To provide an opportunity to the audience of Kullu to witness good theatre, he started a National Theatre Festival in 2017. To keep his actors active during covid crisis, he has initiated solo performances of short stories on virtual platforms. He also expresses his concern that everything is closed and it is difficult to survive during this crisis and it has to be thoughtfully worked out by the system that how the appropriate relief reaches to the genuine artists.
Natrang’s creative team which is managing this national event includes Neeraj Kant, Anil Tickoo, Sumeet Sharma, Sanjeev Gupta, Vikrant Sharma, Mohd Yaseen, Brijesh Avtar Sharma, Gauri Thakur and Chander Shekhar. Theatre actor, director, trainer and acade |
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