Members of Rabha’s group on stage. A Telegraph picture

Guwahati, May 5: In Rabha language, badungduppa is a traditional instrument made of bamboo, strings and all. The badungduppa’s music, the Rabha people believe, stirs the soul and drives out evil from the human heart.

No wonder, young theatre artist Sukracharjya Rabha is stirring souls with a unique theatre movement in the remotest of places in Assam. The name of his group? The Badungduppa Kala Kendra.

This July, Rabha and another members of his group will travel to Belen in Brazil to showcase a theatre festival he had organised inside a jungle in Goalpara district last year. He will make a video presentation of his theatre fest, titled Under The Sal Tree — 2009 (Celebrating Rituals through Theatrical Expression) at the World Congress of the International Drama/Theatre & Education Association (IDEA). The congress, which celebrates theatre in contemporary forms, will be held at the Brazilian city from July 17 to 25.

“Our idea is to reach out to the people through drama, use the medium as a tool for social change and education,” the 33-year-old Rabha told The Telegraph over phone from Goalpara.

For his purpose, Rabha uses rituals of the different communities of the Northeast to spread the message he has in mind, mostly against social evils like caste system and witch-hunting.

“Assam has a rich tradition of stagecraft and the mobile theatres are doing a great job. However, the trend in mobile as well as amateur stage theatre is now to veer towards the dramatic and cinematic style, which attracts the viewers. Our effort is to stay as natural as possible,” he added

A man who believes in staying close to his roots, Rabha has given the term natural a completely different twist. Last December, Rabha actually held the four-day drama festival deep inside a jungle near his ancestral village Rampur in Goalpara’s Agia area. Thousands of people from nearby villages flocked to the festival, which was organised in collaboration of Theatre Embassy, Netherlands, an Amsterdam-based NGO working towards promoting traditional drama from across the world.

During the fest, six plays were staged in different languages, including Rabha, Assamese, Manipuri and Bengali.

Among those present at the festival was one famous name from the country’s theatre circuit, Heisnam Kanhailal from Manipur.

It was a chance meeting with Kanhailal in 2002, which Rabha considers to be a turning point of his career. He travelled to Manipur on the invitation of the Manipuri master and spent two years at the Kalakshetra in Imphal. “Kanhailal showed me the right way on how to be as close to my roots in my productions,” Rabha said. Kanhailal, whom Rabha considers his guru, was effusive in his praise for his shisya. “Rabha is a young visionary and has the right attitude. He knows what he is dealing with and does it with great passion,” Kanhailal told The Telegraph.

For Rabha, the father of a 13-month-old son, his stage efforts are still in its infancy. “We have a lot to do. And a lot to learn,” he added. In his learning process lies the remarkable tale of a story told in the simplest of manner, to the simplest of people.