The Play & Director’s Note
In today’s world, while we claim that the nations have come closer to each other, this global convergence has also unleashed a strange trail of war, violence and up-rootedness, where the victor and the vanquished are caught in the same ritual of death. This death, physical or metaphorical, is cutting across national borders, faiths and cultures. Seeds of hatred are fodder for brutality, poverty, misery and hopelessness. Kafan – Kafan Chor has two great short stories, one of Munshi Premchand and the other of Amin Kamil (A renowned Kashmiri author). The performance takes an absurd tragic journey, through the contemporary helpless human condition, looking at the past and present, known and unknown forces, which create this landscape of death and destruction. The performance has also
taken poems from different lands, different poets, and poems by soldiers in the battlefield. Despite great scientific advancement, has mankind lost the basic value of being humane?
The Director
M. K. Raina is a well-known theatre luminary, who has been working in the field of theatre for the last three and a half decades, innovating, studying, analyzing, writing and teaching. He has worked extensively in both contemporary and traditional theatre in South Asia and has been instrumental in reviving the traditional folk theatre of Kashmir, Bhand Pather. He has been a visiting faculty of several national and international Institutions, such as National School of Drama, Central University of Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, University of Hawaii USA etc. He has been a fellow at the Stanford University, USA and a scholar-in-residence at the Jamia Millia Central
University, New Delhi. He is a well-known social and cultural activist and is a founder member of SAHMAT, a trust formed to promote communal harmony and social equality. He is also a trustee of the South Asia Foundation, India, and the Artistic Director of the theatre group, Prayog. He has also made documentaries and films for various national institutions and for national channels. For his long term contribution to theatre, he has received several awards including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Sahitya Kala Parishad Samman, Sanskriti Award and B. V. Karanth lifetime achievement award.
The Group
Three Arts Club is one of Delhi’s oldest theatre groups, founded in 1943. TAC enthralled and entertained its audiences for four decades (1943-1983). Former presidents Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr. Zakir Hussain, and former Prime Ministers Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Shri Charan Singh, as well as theatre and film luminaries like Prithviraj Kapoor, Shobhana Samarth and Sunder graced its performances. The club also has the distinction of being one of the first groups to give a platform to women on the Delhi stage. Since it revival in 2008, Three Arts Club organizes annual theatre festivals and has to its credit production of 19 plays in various genres ranging from comedy to drama. TAC has made rapid strides in both the technical and artistic aspects of theatre, especially after its association with M.K. Raina. In June 2017 TAC organized a week- long workshop under his able guidance. Three
Arts Club also extends its activities to educational institutes with the aim of promoting histrionic skills among the new generation and has organized many inter-school theatre competitions. True to its original mission (TAC performed children’s theatre in the 1950s), the group provides a platform to school children in Delhi NCR to explore their creative side and stage their own productions.
Cast & Credits
On Stage : Avanish Pandey, Durgesh Kumar, Kriti V. Sharma, Mukul Singh, Nupur Jain, Pankaj Sharawat,
Sachin Srivastava, Shalini Singh, Vipan Kumar
Lights : Govind Yadav
Sound & Music : Rakesh Kumar Singh
Costumes : Kriti V. Sharma
Stage Manager : Shalini Singh
Back Stage : Avinash Singh, Nidhikant Pandey, Sanjeev Singh
Producer : Anuradha Dar
Hindi Translation of KafanChor : Asif Ali
Storywriters : Munshi Premchand & Amin Kamil
Director : M K Raina