New Delhi, 20 September (H.S.): The number of young Hindi playwrights is steadily increasing, which is a matter of great satisfaction, said Suman Kumar, Deputy Secretary of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, here.

Kumar made the remarks on Saturday during the launch of senior theatre practitioner and playwright Alok Shukla’s fourth collection of plays, ‘Patjhad Ke Phool Aur Dekhona’, at the ‘Sahitya Ke Ped’ stall of Sanjana Books, located in front of the Shri Ram Centre in Delhi.

The book was jointly launched by senior playwright Pratap Sehgal, playwright and critic Rajesh Kumar, Sangeet Natak Akademi Deputy Secretary Suman Kumar, theatre director Pradeep Bajpai, senior writer Shashi Sehgal, actor Shrikant Verma, playwright Anil Thakur and Sanjana Tiwari, Director of Sanjana Books.

Rejecting the commonly held perception that new plays are no longer being written in Hindi, Suman Kumar said that writers such as Alok Shukla continue to remain active and that theatre practitioners should bring such contemporary plays to the stage.

Senior playwright Pratap Sehgal praised Alok Shukla’s literary and theatrical work, saying that his continued writing and active involvement in theatre direction despite battling a serious illness was inspiring. He congratulated the author on the publication of the two full-length plays.

Playwright and critic Rajesh Kumar praised the structure of ‘Patjhad Ke Phool’, noting that the play focuses on the psychological state of the elderly and offers two different endings. According to him, this gives directors the freedom to stage the play according to their own interpretation.

Discussing the second play, ‘Dekhona’, Rajesh Kumar said that just as Mohan Rakesh’s plays are studied today to understand the social environment of their time, Alok Shukla’s ‘Dekhona’ is likely to be read and staged 10 to 15 years from now as an important theatrical document for understanding the social realities of the COVID-19 period.

The event was attended by a large number of people associated with the literary and theatre world, including theatre director Pradeep Bajpai, actors Shrikant Verma and Vipin Kumar, Shashi Sehgal, Anil Thakur, playwright Alok Shukla, Abhimanyu Singh Chaudhary, Shikha Malhotra and Himmat Singh Negi.

---------------

Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar