The audience echoed in one voice, “No.” “I’m worried that you don’t have theater classes,” Dr Subedi said.
The festival opened with the participating teams from eight different colleges introducing their teams and performing a short excerpt from their plays.
“It’s a new beginning,” said Shanta Dixit, director of Rato Bangala School, commenting on the event. [break]
“Theater offers a lot of new things that you don’t get in your academics.” she said.
“Theater is a universal language like music and mathematics,” said Satya Mohan Joshi, playwright and the chief guest of the event.
“Though we don’t understand every language, we can easily understand plays performed by people from different ethnicities,” he said, adding, “A play is enthralling to see as well as hear.”
As he spoke in Sama Natak Ghar, he was filled with nostalgia for the ‘Mukunda Indira’, a play by Bal Krishna Sama, which he watched 72 years ago at Durbar High School. “I was barely 12 years old then”.
“From that time to till now, theaters have come a long way,” he said, adding, “Pathsala theater should lead and bring theater enthusiasts under one umbrella.”
Suman Rayamajhi, director of the festival, said, “Theater culture is developing here and I hope our group will become larger as the culture flourishes.”
Pathsala Theatre performed ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, a one-act play written by Samuel Beckett, at the event. Prabhat Sharma Poudel translated it to Nepali and Prajjwol Parajuli directed it.
On February 18, Oscar International College staged ‘Purgatory’, a drama by the Irish writer William Butler Yeats.
Rato Bangala School ‘B’ will perform ‘Sunyata’ at 12 noon and 5 pm tomorrow.
Related story
Theaters back into operation