Details of Charan das Chor

About The Group

Naya Theatre, founded in 1959, is a professional touring theatre company that has been performing continuously across the length and breadth of India, as well as in many places abroad.  The company began in Delhi, but moved its base to Bhopal in the 90s.  The core actors of Naya Theatre come from amongst the highly talented performers and singers of rural Chhattisgarh.  However, Naya Theatre does not perform traditional or rural forms of theatre – from very early on, even before the group was established; Habib Tanvir had begun experiments with language form and most importantly a mix of urban and rural performers.  The coming together of Tanvir and the Chhattisgarhi artists eventually resulted in the creation of a unique, modern Indian theatre idiom, which caught the imagination of the Indian Public with Charandas Chor in 1975 and has never quite released it since.

NAYA THEATRE

The undoubted theatrical highlight of this year’s FESTIVAL OF INDIA will be the long-awaited debut of the remarkable Naya Theatre, only the second theatre company from India to ever visit Britain.  Naya Theatre was founded in 1959 by director Habib Tanvir as an ad-hoc organization comprising folk artists from the remote tribes and villages of Chhattisgarh, located in Tanvir’s home region of Madhya Pradesh.

The company became a registered non-profit cultural organization in 1964 and a professional theatre in 1970, staging at least three new plays a year and touring India.

In addition to their performances, the company also organizers lecture demonstrations, seminars, training courses and workshops, open to both professionals and amateurs.  With Peter Brook their joint companies are holding workshops as part of Brook’s preparation for his production of the great Indian classic THE MAHABARATA next year.  In a visually exciting production which allows ample scope for the exuberant wit and energy of the village performers, CHARAN THE THIEF features improvised dialogue, music, songs and dance, combining traditional forms of Sanskrit theatre with folk theatre and contemporary techniques.  Habib Tanvir’s adaptation of this comic folk – tale has been acclaimed throughout India as one of the outstanding contributions to new Indian Theatre and was recently the subject of a full – length feature folk.

At this year’s Edinburgh Festival, prior to their visit to London, Naya Theatre played to critical acclaim at the Assembly Rooms.

“They represent an absolute extreme of purity: a peasant company directed by a highly sophisticated man who brings them up to town and takes every conceivable precaution to prevent the town from contaminating them.  They go back to their villages at harvest time.  They speak their local Hindi patois.. It’s pop art, using the vocabulary of natural fun, and it that sense the Naya shows could be from anywhere.  But there’s something about this part of India that makes them very talented.  They are born actors.  What they produce together is an enormous variety of stories that they tell completely on their own terms:  not only village fables, but bits of Brecht and ‘The Bourgeois Genti home’ with no apparent difference.  From folk tales to Moliere it’s all one seamless movement deriving from their experience of life.  There’s no half way house between the local root and the foreign style”.

PETER BROOK in THE TIMES

  

SYNOPSIS

CHARAN THE THIEF

CHARAN THE THEIF is constructed as a folk tale about a thief who inadvertently makes a pledge to his guru never to tell a lie. He stands by his pledge through he never stops thieving. The guru has actually asked him to give up his bad habits if he wants to become his disciple. The thief offers to take four other pledges instead: he will never eat off golden plates, never ride an elephant at the head of a procession, never marry queen and never accept the throne of a country. To this the guru retorts that as he so generously undertaken to give up four things on his own account, he might undertake to give up one little thing at his guru’s request. “You are a big liar,” says the guru, “give up lying”. The thief consents and that is how the deal is clinched.

“The story has contemporary social relevance and I have tried to exploit this aspect of the story to the full.  I have written the play with my folk actors, all of them improvisers, rather than with a pen.  The same technique is adopted when directing.  Indeed it is this technique which I have been persistently trying to perfect over the years with the help of the rural artists who form the professional hard core of Naya Theatre”.

HABIB TANVIR

   

            CHARAN  THE THEIF – CAST LIST

CHARANDAS                            -           CHAITRAM  YADAV

       HAVALDAR                             -           RAVI LAL SANGRE

GURUJI                                       -           MANHARAN GANDHARVA

    RANI                                            -           NAGEEN TANVIR

   DASI                                                          LATA KHAPARDE

     SATTU WALA /JUARI             -           AMR SINGH GANDHARVA

     MALGUJAR                                -           DEVI LAL NAG     

                                   

    SARABI/ MANTRI /NOUKAR  -           UDAY RAM SHRIVAS

    GANJEDI / PUJARI / MUNIM -             DHANNULAL SINHA

    RAUT TOLI  / VILLAGER’S    -           RAM CHANDRA SINGH,                                                                          ,                                   PARUL SINGH, SANDEEP YADAV,                                                                                          PRIYNKA SINGH, SANGEETA SINHA,                                                                                                PAYAL SINGH,RATNESH SAHU,VIBHUTI                   

                                                                        RAHUL JADAV AND ALL PANTHI PARTY

     

PUROHIT                                      -           ANUP RANJAN /YOGESH TIWARI

  SOLDEIR-1                                   -           RAM CHANDRA SINGH

SOLDEIR-2                                    -           SANDEEP YADAV

SOLDEIR-3                                    -           RATNESH SAHU

SOLDEIR-4                                    -           RAHUL JADAV

PANTHI DANCE                          -           BABA GURU KE MAHIMA PARTY,BHOPAL

CHORUS                               -        NAGIN TANVIR, LATA KHAPARDE

                                                          AMAR SINGH, DEVI LAL, MANHARAN

    MUSICIAN

HARMONIUM                       -        DEVI LAL NAG

TABLA                                   -        AMARDAS MANIKPURI

DHOLAK/MANJEERA           -        RAM SHARAN VAISHNAV     

 CREDIT

COSTUME DESIGN             _       MONIKA MISHRA TANVIR

LIGHT OPERATION           _       DHANULAL SINHA

    STORY                                 _       VIJAY DAN DETHA

PLAY WRIGHT                     -        HABIB TANVIR

MUSIC &DIRECTION            -        HABIB TANVIR

SHOW DURATION: -                   ONE HOUR FIFTY MINUTE

L & S for CHOR:

Lights:          

Spots – 6                                :           1000 W

            Spots – 2                                :           500 W

            Freznel – 12                          :           1000 W

            Par Lights – 6                        :           1000 W

Dimmer                                  :           18 channels

Gelatin                                   :           Pink, Amber, Blue

Sound:          

Foot mikes                             :           4

            Mikes on Stand                     :           2

            Collar Mikes                         :           2

            Amplifiers

Set for CHOR :       6’x12’platform – height 10”