Atma being staged at Rabindra Mandap in Bhubaneswar. Pictures by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan 25: The ninth state-level theatre festival organised by theatre group Panchamveda concluded on Friday. The five-day festival presented an array of interesting plays at Rabindra Mandap.

The host theatre troupe, Panchamveda, staged a play called Abasara on the inaugural day. Directed by veteran Haren Sahoo, the play told the story of a son deserting his parents.

On the second day, Pattamundai-based theatre group Spandana enacted a social play called Palata Sua. The play depicted the situation of backward-class people and how the powerful exploit the special provisions given by the government to the marginalised. The helpless and hapless section of the society fall prey to the fake promises of those in power. Suppressed and cheated for years, they decided to revolt but had lost the means to fight by then. They are forced to lead their lives in the same precarious conditions. Kailash Chandra Nayak, who played a pivotal character in the play, wrote and directed it.

The third day of the festival saw Atma, a comedy based on a supernatural event. A calm and composed sage keeps asking his flirtatious disciple to meditate and spend time in reading religious texts.

When a girl dies of snakebite, the disciple, charmed by her beauty, challenges the sage to bring her back to life or admit that he is a fraud. The sage, in order to win his disciple’s trust, switches his life into the girl. The comedy arises from the confusion of the relatives of the girl, the disciple and the agent of Yamraj, who come to take the girl’s spirit away. The play left the audience in splits.

The last two days of the festival saw Nimitta Matra by Odisha Natak Samaroha Samiti and Sala Phulara Basana by Rourkela-based Prayas.

“Unlike the popular notion, people have not lost interest in theatre,” said Haren Sahoo, secretary of Panchamveda theatre group.