Staging 'Hansa, Karo Puratan Baat,' based on Premchand's 'Kafan'

Hansa, Karo Puratan Baat, a play in Awadhi whose title is inspired by a song of Kabir, is based on Munshi Premchand's last short story 'Kafan' ('The Shroud') which he first published in Urdu in 1935. The play, written and directed by Tarun Kumar, emerged from a six-month long theatre workshop in Mumbai, jointly organized by Richa Nagar and Tarun Kumar. The workshop brought together a group of 20 people to grapple with issues of caste, class, gender, and religion through a focus on Hindi/Urdu fiction. The workshop participants currently live in Mumbai but almost all of them grew up in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Harayana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Gujarat. While some of them aspire to become successful cinema actors, others work as domestic workers in the homes of film and television artists in the Yaari Road area of Mumbai and had never seen a play before participating in the workshop. In the last week of December 2014, the group performed four shows of Hansa before packed audiences, followed by long discussions between actors and audiences, at the D. V. Bal Auditorium in Versova, Mumbai.

Budhiya (Mumtaz Sheikh) and Madhav (Alok Panday)

Madhav (played by Gaurav Gupta here) and Budhiya  (Mumtaz)

Neeraj Kushwaha (on harmonium) leads the chorus with Satish Trivedi (on dholak), Akul Sangwan, Deependra, and Susheel Shukla

Men of the village (Gabbar Mukhiya, Anil Yadav, Gaurav Gupta, Avi Yadav and others) rejoicing and dancing as the chorus sings, Gagri Sambhalo, Aho Banwari.

Budhiya (Mumtaz) screams and writhes in pain

Ghisu (Bhagwan Das) and Madhav (Alok Panday) mourn the death of Budhiya