Life of Skandgupta brought alive on stage in Lucknow

Renowned writer

Jaishankar Prasad

’s play Skandagupta was brought alive on stage by theatre personality and director

Salim Arif

at the Thrust Auditorium of Bhartendu Natya Akademi, recently. The play, which marked the culmination of the month-long workshop of the

BNA

students, had the second-year students of the academy with some guest artists on stage.

A scene from the play (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

Krishna Choubey (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

(L) Ramesh Chandra Gupta (R) Salim Arif (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

The play revolved around Gupta period when

Skandgupta

unified India after suppressing the fight within the country and protecting it from outside forces. With a huge cast of around 40 artists,

Kushal Dubey

essayed the role of Skandgupta. The other cast included Abdul Salam Ansari, Ankita Mishra, and

Krishna Chaubey

in key roles. The music of the play was given by

Amod Bhatt

. Talking about why he adpated Jai Shankar Prasad’s play with such a huge cast, Arif, an alunmi of BNA, said, “Jaishankar Prasad’s name is taken at seminars and lectures, we talk about Hindi theatre, but nobody stages his plays. Even the institutions in the Hindi-speaking regions, nobody likes to stage his work because of the length and cost involved. So, the idea behind staging this play was to choose a Hindi playwright so that students come to know more about him and a tradition of staging Hindi plays is carried on.”

(L) Malini Awasthi (R) Raj Verdhan Pandey and Parvindar Singh (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

(L) Vijit Singh and Harikesh Maurya (R) Anil Rastogi (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

Anshumali Tandon and Rakesh Pandey (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

Yash Chaurasia and Pavani (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

(L) Deepak Soni (R) Lucky and Gunjan (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)