Dear friends,
Rewa is pronounced as Reewa (रीवा). Its in Madhya Pradesh( the central province in the india) normally known as baghelkhand ( Land of baghel which were the kshatriya kings of this province in past). Rewa has a great amature theatre line up in this independent India.
I saw theatre activities since my childhood overhere. The pioneer in the amature theatre activities in India, is a group known as IPTA ( Indian Peoples Theatre Association) has contributed soundly here in Rewa also. The persons who were working in different small groups came together and formed the unit of IPTA here in arround 1990-91. In the start of IPTA in Rewa, there was a BAL-IPTA ( IPTA of Children) too for the activities of theatre among children, almost alike the TIE ( the institution presently working under the name of National School of Drama). The main aim of this Bal-Ipta, was to give an orientation for theatre through life and studies alongwith activities of theatre. So coming on the main line IPTA given a sound mark on the field of Rewa theatre too as like it was in the whole country.
IPTA has presented its first Stage production after a series of more than 100 street play shows ( Nukkad natak) and that was the play of Nag Bodas's TEEN TAPPAR, which was produced through a workshop directed by Sitaram Soni from IPTA ( Vivechana) Jabalpur. I was child artist in that production. After this play, IPTA almost steared all the theatre line up till 1998-99.
Although there were many other groups like Prayas, Kislaya, Kshitij etc who made their presentations meanwhile, but in my view IPTA was leader for all of them and almost all other groups were just making a trial to highlight them. They almost had done nothing contributory neither production wise nor ideology wise. The highlight of their works can be written as some good scripts taken for production only.
The prominent names in the activities of IPTA, who made theatre in real in Rewa were Reena Shukla, Neelu- Ajit Harshe,Late Rajesh Shukla, Suman Singh, Vidya Prakash Tiwari, Hanumant Kishor Sharma, Chandra Shekhar Pandey, Devesh Mishra, Devendra Sharma (Music), Om Dwivedi, Ashish Tripathi alongwith Late Manish Shrivastav, Kamal Kanpuri, Naved Usmani, Pankaj Dixit, Dilip Pawle, Yogendra Mishra, Shailendra Dwivedi and many more. In music section for theatre, the contribution made by Sushil Sharma, Sunil Sharma, Shashi bhushan- Aditya Bhushan and Abhishek Tripathi, who also is a creator of this blog to present you the ultimate history by his own view.
The main part as like think tank for the theatre culture in Rewa was consisted of reknown person from literature , culture and education etc. The higher authoritative decisions for mainly ideological issues in IPTA Rewa were made by Prof. Kamla Prasad, Prof. Sevaram Tripathi, Prof. Vijay Agrawal, Jairam Shukla, Rajiv Shukla etc.
The persons who were also sound to their extents through activities in theatre apart from IPTA are mainly Harikrishna Khatri, Yogesh Tripathi, Harish Dhawan, Hirendra Singh, Anwaar Siddiqui etc who also were busy in Radio plays alongwith the names in light like Pratibha jain, Mahesh saxena with all radio staff and artists crew.
Many persons can feel disagree with some of mine or whole of mine view, but still i believe strongly that what i wrote are the factual informations.
After this publication i will come with a deeper and closer view regarding all activities including the play critics and all......till then good bye......................
