This past week, the Shilpee Theatre staged a play called Nirdosh Ma, directed by Loonibha Tuladhar, which was a compilation of five different short plays, all connected by a single theme: innocence. 

Two of the five plays were narrated by actors speaking as inanimate objects—an IRs 500 note, and a Topi; one was narrated by actors playing a school of fish. The last two plays were the dramatisation of news published in national dailies. 

It is a norm at Shilpee Theatre to produce a play at the end of each of their three-month-long acting classes. Nirdosh Ma was enacted by the students of the seventh batch. So it was a play that would serve as a stepping stone for actors who would later go on to explore their talents in the Nepali theatre scape. 

The first snippet of the play, titled Ma Rupaiyan, was enacted by actress Banshari Pandey, who played the role of an IRS 500 note. The play is based on the crisis brought on by the recent Indian currency demonetisation. In it, a pregnant Nepali woman goes to Gujarat for work, manages to collect some fifteen 500 notes, and returns back home. But when the crisis hits, she is unable to exchange the currency to pay for her delivery, before eventually losing her life. All of these events are not enacted on stage but told by the titular Rupee note. Played out with use of pantomimes and voiceovers, actress Pandey rendered an energetic performance. But largely because of the very design of the script, the sense of the tragedy didn’t pan out as it should have. 

Likewise, the second snippet, titled Selfie-Fish, was about a school of fish in a lake. Selfie-Fish is about the lives of the fish, how they are trapped and sold, and how they adopt various measures to escape the fisherman’s net. And also about how the fish take selfies. It is the stuff that makes fairy tales. This snippet, too, established the fish as innocent beings. 

Yet another snippet about an inanimate object, Topi, is a sequence that tells the story of a Tehrathume Dhaka Topi, and how the world is seen from its unique vantage point. A topi, worn by a certain Bire Dai, is one day let loose, and suddenly the same Bire Dai takes the role of the topi and narrates its story. 

The fourth snippet, Khaddhama ko Bhagye, tells the story of Dolma Sherpa, a migrant Nepali worker, working in Kuwait and how she was compelled to serve a jail-term, even though she was innocent. It is based on journalist Devendra Bhattarai’s reportage, which was written after Sherpa returned to Nepal once she was proven innocent in court. Khaddhama ko Bhagye, played by actors Menuka Rai and Nisha Pakhrin, though a story about one particular individual, narrates the plight of every migrant worker forced to suffer in foreign lands. 

The last snippet in Nirdosh Ma was about a 17 year old boy, Roshan Bogati (played by Rohit Khatri) accused of raping his own cousin. In this story, the real culprits, the masterminds, are never apprehended and it is only Bogati who is charged with the crime. 

In bringing what essentially were five different short one-act plays under the banner of one singular play, Nirdosh Ma, made for interesting viewing, but largely because of the novelty of the script’s structure. All the plays might have had innocence as its central theme, but with the settings so vastly different, on top of the different styles of narration, as an audience you couldn’t help but get initially sucked into the act, only to be jarringly pulled away every ten minutes or so. Furthermore, with its minimal sets and props, you would be forgiven for failing to become invested in what was transpiring on stage, particularly with the knowledge that the act would be over all too soon.

Some of the snippets were genuinely engrossing, particularly Khaddhama ko Bhagye and Selfie-Fish. Perhaps, these one-acts had enough material that could have been expanded into full-length plays and infused with more rigour; but with their stints on stage short lived, you couldn’t help walking away ruminating over the lost opportunities. 

That being said, Nirdosh Ma, enacted by fledgling theatre actors, did serve as a great promissory note for what is in store for the Nepali theatrescape in the years to come. The themes introduced were fresh, and barring a few rough patches, the actors rendered some gripping performances that kept you glued to the seat despite the dissonance in the overall structure of the performance. 

All in all, Nirdosh Ma, was not a great play—far from it at times—but in bringing five different snippets into the fold, it brought forward an experimentation that might work for another play in the future. One that has a stronger adhesive, rather than just a generic theme of innocence, that binds the parts into a more convincing whole.