The six-day festival is being presented by Department of Art, Culture & Languages in association with Urdu Academy
New Delhi, Oct 17, 2014: An idealist son pitted against a materialist father; and two dejected lovers looking for peace in a world hit by meaningless violence – two different stories written by legendary writer Khwaja Ahmed Abbas were staged today to wide acclaim at the Urdu Drama Festival.
The six-day festival being presented by Delhi Government’s Department of Art, Culture & Languages in association with the Urdu Academy is paying tribute to Abbas and Qudsia Zaidi, the pioneer of Hindustani theater.
The third day of the festival saw a stage presentation of two different stories of Khwaja Ahmed Abbas under the banner of ‘Abbas ke Do Rang’ highlighting his versatility and his socialist leanings as a story teller.
The first story, “My Son Is My Enemy”, revolved around a lawyer who transforms from a revolutionary freedom fighter into a wealth and power chasing professional, and finds himself pitted against his idealist son, who still stands for his father’s lost ideals. The second presentation “Ajanta” is a story of two lovers who flee the brutal partition violence in Bombay and fed up with senseless killing all around find solace and peace in the artistic brilliance of the caves of Ajanta.
Presented by ‘Three Arts Club’, one of Delhi’s oldest theatre groups, and directed by Amitabh Srivastava , a graduate from the National School of Drama the presentation juxtaposed the two stories of Abbas and the common thread of Idealism running through them.
While the first three days of the festival paid tribute to the works of Abbas, the last three days will see the staging of plays scripted by Qudsia Zaidi. On the fourth day of the festival (Thursday), ‘Jaan Har’, a play written by Zaidi and directed by Sheikh Khairuddin will be performed by t
he Living Theatre Group, while the fifth day (Friday) will see the staging of Qudsia’s ‘Khalid ki Khala’, directed by Chander Shekhar Sharma and performed by Mask Players Art Group. The festival will end on Saturday with Qudsia’s play ‘Dhoban ko Kapre Diye’, directed by Danish Iqbal and presented by the Social Pride Welfare Society. CCI Newswire
