Oriya Play to be staged in Mumbai.

Much to the cheer of the Orissa’s theatre fraternity, Oriya play ‘Maati’ (the mother earth), produced by the city-based Natya Chetana theatre organisation, will be staged at Rang-Sangam national theatre festival in Mumbai later this month.The nine-day festival, being hosted by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, and mounted at Mumbai University Theatre Academy, will feature 12 plays in seven languages -- Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Gujarati and Dogri and Oriya. ‘Maati’ has been scripted and directed by Natya Chetana’s founder-director Subodh Patnaik, a noted theatre activist who has set up ‘Natyagram’ theatre village near the State capital.“I was provoked to produce the play by newspaper reports on the series of farmers’ suicides across several Indian states, including Orissa. ‘Natya Chetana’ team went and stayed with such farmers’ families in Orissa’s Kalahandi district to have a feel of the dramatic situation that resulted in the tragic situation before embarking on this production,” says Mr. Patnaik. It is based on real life, he adds. The story apart, what makes ‘Maati’ a poignant play is its presentation.