July 13th 2023.
Bhopal was abuzz with activities on Thursday as the ‘10th Satra Samapti Natya Samaroh’ began with the play ‘Suhane Afsane’ at Ravindra Bhawan. The four-day event was organised by the Madhya Pradesh School of Drama for the outgoing students of 2022-23 batch.
The play was directed by Vidyanidhee Vanarase ‘Prasad’ and was based on ‘The Good Doctor’ written by American playwright Neil Simon. It featured nine short stories, written by Russian author Anton Chekhov, depicting the extraordinary forms of ordinary incidents that occur in daily life.
The two-hour twenty-minute play was presented in a realistic style with comic punches. This was the last production of the batch before graduating. The story ‘The Sneeze’ was based on ‘The Death of a Government Clerk’ and revolved around a government clerk having a nervous breakdown after accidentally sneezing on a general during a night out at the opera.
The story ‘Surgery’ was based on an eponymous title in which a sexton visits the dentist complaining of a toothache, only to be frightened by the dentist's zeal. ‘Too Late for Happiness’ was about an older man and woman contemplating making time for each other in song.
‘The Drowned Man’ was about an entrepreneurial tramp who pretends to drown himself as a form of ‘maritime entertainment’. ‘The Audition’ was about an actress who walked four days from Odessa to Moscow to give an audition for the writer's next play. ‘A Defenceless Creature’ was about a woman with a nervous disorder harassing an ill banker to extort money for her injured husband, while ‘The Arrangement’ was about a writer's father taking his shy 19-year-old son to a brothel.
The play was a delightful amalgamation of comedy and drama and was a fitting way to end the batch’s journey at the Madhya Pradesh School of Drama.
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