The religion with no God-Theatre

‘We pay hymn to Nat-Devata, the God of theatre’, sings a group of fifty odd people. It’s barely dawn, when the ‘theatre village’ or ‘Natyagram’ wakes up to the chants of vedic hymns. The atmosphere is cleansed with spiritual music and the day begins.

The prayers catch your attention, addressed to the God of theatre, the Nat Devata. The concept is really intriguing as people here worship their passion. Having alienated themselves with any religious or party based propaganda, this village and the movement-‘Natya Chetana’ is solely dedicated to the cause of spreading awareness through theatre.

Subodh Pattnaik or Subodh ‘bhai’ as fondly called by 1o year old, shares his vision and tells us how he worked for more than 30 years to realize this dream. The five day long People’s Theatre Festival is an annual ritual that takes place each year at the village which was just a barren land outside of Khurda, near Bhubaneswar. It witnesses the diversity of theatre in regional languages and also boasts of international presence. This year’s festival saw Patrick Navat and Karen Libman, theatre directors from France and USA respectively.

To spread the ethics and message of theatre to the masses and bringing unity to the community, this man along with his organisation is adamant to preserve the values of Oriya theatre through the practices of ‘Indian theatre’.

Opposed to western influences on theatre, he brings back to us the style of theatre which evolved around two-thousand-five-hundred years from India. Written by Bharat-Muni, the ‘Natyashastra’ the encyclopedia of Indian theatre is revived by Subodh, as he brings out the science and style of stagecraft, music from the roots of India.

‘’As the name says, Natya Chetana-awareness through theatre, is our mission. In this endeavor to bring theater to the masses, we have given almost three decades and have seen our dream bloom. But we still have miles to go’’.