Bhubaneswar: Celebrating the 91st birth anniversary of veteran theatre personality Sachi Das, the Dr Sachi Das Memorial Trust presented its debut production ‘Indrapurare Sachi’ at Rabindra Mandap in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.
The auditorium was filled to the last seat with city theatre lovers to witness the celestial homage to one of Odisha’s most loved styage icons.
Playwright Rabindra Kumar Sahoo, who has penned over ten plays for the late actor and director, including the most popular play ‘Saguna Basichi Dena Melei’, said he drew inspiration to write the play ‘Indrapurare Sachi’ from a conversation he had with Sachi Das.
“Once during discussion, he had joked that playwright Dr Bijay Mishra and theatre personality and art director Asim Basu are in heaven and after his own passing, the trio would reunite to stage plays in heaven. That joke had become the seed of my play,” recalled Sahoo.
The play opens in King Indra’s court where apasaras Rambha and Menaka are dancing. In response to King Indra’s quarry regarding the delay of staging a play in the heaven, Narada says, “With the arrival of actor and director Dr Sachi Das, the wait for the play has ended. He along with playwright Bijay Mishra and art director Asim Basu, who are already here, will take charge of the play.”
What follows is a play-within-a-play, brilliantly blending myth and social realism. In the play, Sachi Das (played by Gobind Mohapatra) portrays the character of Biswajit Pattanayak, a compassionating man who has raised his friend’s daughter Ipsita after his death. While Biswajit and his wife Pravati (Sonika)wish to have Ipsita (Snehashree Nayak) as their daughter-in-law and their son Deba and Ipsita are also in love, Raja, a local goon with political links, sets eyes on Ipsita.
The story takes a dark turn when Raja, who supplies girls to political leaders at the nearby IB, kidnap Ipsita and keeps her at the IB. Then the narrative witnesses some sequences, culminating in Ipsita being subjected to horrific violence, Raja murdering a political leader and Ipsita’s rescue.
Despite the story fails to gather pace at times, the emotional depth of the play had the audience glued to their seats till the end.
The use of symbolic interplay between heaven and earth offered a thoughtful reflection on the endurance of art and morality beyond mortal boundaries.
All the artistes tried their best to do justice to their characters. While Gobind Mohapatra’s duel portrayal of Sachi Das and Biswajit Pattanayak added depth to the story, Sonika, Shreechandan Nayak, Snehashree Nayak, Amar Mohanty and Raja Samal added dimensions to the play with their respective roles of Pravati, Deba, Ipsita, Raja and Indra.
At the same time, Manas Kumar Parida, Rakesh Satapathy, Prajnadutta Sahu and Jagdish Maharana and Mama enriched the storytelling with their music, light, stage and costume design respectively.
Earlier in the evening, invited dignitaries including Eastern Media Limited’s chairman Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, ex-MLA Sunanda Mishra, former Culture secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi and special secretary of Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department Deba Prasad Dash shared memories of Sachi Das.
Here, a call was also made to install statues Sachi Das and Dr Bijay Mishra on the premises of Rabindra Mandap emerged-a gesture many felt would immortalize their constructions to the Odisha theatre world.
