Watch the premiere of a play that brings to life familiar scenes and characters set against the backdrop of a bazaar
A scene from the story, Darogaji written by Parag Dubey
Bhopal-based Theatre Company, Parag Theatre Productions will open their new play Bazaar in the city, this weekend. The 75-minute play is a collage of three stories, all set in a marketplace. “When people go to a local market, all they see is happiness, smiles and money. We come across the same people every day. They are familiar faces but you never end up knowing their story. The play weaves together stories of people making a living from this bazaar,” says director Parag Dubey adding that each of the three stories were his favourites individually. “Honestly, I can’t remember how the idea to string these pieces together came about. I just enjoyed these stories and thought that the common ground could be that they were all people who functioned in the same market,” says Dubey who wrote the script four months back and started rehearsing about a month and a half ago.
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Parag Dubey
The play opens with a story called Shanti, written by Saadat Hasan Manto. “It is a love story about a prostitute and a well-off man called Maqbool, who fall in love with each other. When he first meets her, he is an unusual client, as he only wants to talk to her. The story takes us through her life and how she becomes a prostitute. It has a hopeful happy end,” shares Dubey who will play the various characters in the story, including the prostitute in a solo act. The second story written by Munshi Premchand is called Jurmana. The protagonist is a sweeper at the market who is always terrified of the jurmana (fine) that she has to pay. “The cleanliness inspector finds some reason or the other to deduct atleast Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 from her monthly earning of Rs 3,000 which makes her paranoid,” says Dubey. Dubey’s wife and co-star Santoshi Chakraborty will perform this story as a dramatic reading.
Actors at rehearsal
The third story written by Dubey himself is called Daroga ji and is a comic tale of a policeman who falls in love with a girl at the bazaar and then tries to impress her in many ways. That’s where there’s a twist in the story. This act will star Akash Bhatt and Ram Verma apart from Dubey and Chakraborty. A discussion with the audience will take place after each act so they get a chance to interact with the cast. “I enjoy this more than the performance,” reveals Dubey.
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