A team from Mandala Theatre has embarked on a tour to western Nepal as part of the ‘Bigat sanga byawahar’ (Engaging with the Past) programme. As part of the programme, the team will stage the play Naufrine Bhyaguta, a revised version of the play Jumping Frog (first staged in Mandala in 2014), in seven cities across the west.

According to coordinator Somnath Khanal, the two-week long programme will start with a staging in Badhaiya Tal in Bardiya on Tuesday, Oct 2. The play will be staged in Mandala’s mobile theatre bus Junkiri.

The play, which makes use of mimes and songs and zero dialogues, is a story of a frog, named Bhaktaram, who suffers through the loss of his parents at an early age and continues to endure his existence in an unforgiving society populated by violent birds that killed Bhaktaram’s parents.

“Like every other well-written fable, Naufrine Bhyaguta resonates deeply to the society we live in—in that it shows the viewers the manifold effects of violence and how one can respect each other despite having serious differences in thei outlook towards the world,” Khanal said.

Written and directed by longstanding theatre actress and director Pashupati Rai, Naufrine Bhyaguta features actors Najir Husen, Archana Panthi, Umesh Tamang, Ranjana Oli, Anil Subba, Sonam Lama and Jonen Chhetri.

Artistic director of Mandala Theatre Rajan Khatiwada said that the objective of the programme is to express solidarity to the families of the people disappeared in the Maoist insurgency and bring it into the attention of the stakeholders to solve the issues of those families.

Following Tuesday’s show in Badhaiya Tal, the play will be staged in Belbhar (on Oct 3), Bhurigaun (Oct 4), Janaknagar (Oct 5), Tikapur in Kailali (Oct 6), Bijauri in Dang (Oct 8) and will wrap up with a show in Ghorahi on October 9.