Aarohan adapted some of the great plays of the world to the Nepal context. We have performed Sophocle’s Oedipus, Moliere’s Scapan, Jean Paul Satre’s The Man Without a Shadow and The Respectable Prostitute, Camus’ The Just and The Outsider, Brecht’s The Good Women of Sichuan, Alexandre Vampilov’s The Elder Son, Junji Kinosita’s Yu-Juru as well as a number of Indian plays.

We regularly perform plays by Nepal’s own playwrights such as Govinda Bahadur Gothale, Bijaya Malla, Abhi Subedi, and Ashesh Malla.

Storylines of some Nepali plays:

"AGNI KO KATHA"
A Story of Fire

AGNIKO KATHA or A STORY of Fires is a set in a certain monastery of the Tibetan Buddhist order in the mountain of Nepal. The scenes and other details are supposed to have semeiotic and symbolic rather than naturalistic representation. It is play about concept, quest, queries and quirks that the characters show during the course of the action. A constant tension between a fixed space and spaces not seen takes place in the play. Human beings are caught between rigidity and movement. Characters disturbed by their information about the fire that consumes an old library somewhere in the precincts of the monastery, try to read more meaning in the simple event than it is necessary. The fire only works as a catalyst that brings different modes imagination together. The over interpretation or the misreading of the letters consumed by the fire, the letters the monks and the nuns have not seen or read, comes like a stone in the calm lake casting ripples. The play bring together the sense of insecurity caused by fires and the uncertainties that pervade the minds of the acolytes, nuns and poet living under different conditions in different monasteries, and meeting only occasionally. The overall climate of uncertainty and burning prevailing in the region and in the space where it is set, adds poignancy to the drama and characters' action.

WE HAVE THE SAD MEMORIES OF THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY FIRES IN THE TYANGBOCHE MONASTERY AT THE FOOT OF MT. EVERST IN 1989, AND LIBRARIES, SCHOOL/COLLEGES AND PLACES OF LEARING. DRAMAS HAVE BEGUN AND ENDED AROUND ALL THESE EVENTS.

"AARUKA PHULKA SAPANA"
Dreams of Peach Blossoms

This short poetic play is written by a well-known poet and art scholar Dr. Ahi Subedi, who has been long associated with both the teaching and interpretation of drama and theatre. This play tries to capture the indigenous tradition of drama and music in a symbolic form through the use of poetic language and images, and projects the complex and sombre story broken with a jerk by the tourist guides who dramatize our own relationship with the cultural heritage and the maketisation of the serious ideas and icons of time and place.
Sunil Pokharel, a very well-known Director of Arohan Theatre Group established in 1982, has sought to capture the ethos of the Newar culture that surrounds the play, the human stories behind the facade of the cultural heritage of this country, that is also highly used to marketise the indigenous narratives and their iconic representations to a large group of foreign visitors to this city where stoned, wooden artifacts and courtyards are replete exquisite patterns of arts-carvings, sculptures and images. Pokharel has played in and directed many plays written in foreign languages rendered in Nepali and street theatres over the last two decades. Aarohan is one of the few vibrant theatre groups well recognised both in Nepal and outside. In this poetic play Pokharel has experimented with dramatic presentation and techniques. The cast include some very well-known theatre artists and directors.

A Doll's House

A Doll's House traces the awakening of Nora Helmer from her unexamined life of domestic comfort. Ruled her whole life by either her father or her husband, Nora must question the foundation of everything she believes in when her marriage is put to the test. Having borrowed money from a man of ill-repute named Krogstad by forging her father's signature, she was able to pay for a trip to Italy to save her sick husband's life (he was unaware of his condition and the loan, believing that the money came from Nora's father). Since then, she has had to contrive ways to pay back her loan, growing particularly concerned with money.

"MAAYAA DEVI KAA SAPANAA"
Dreams of Mayadevi

About the play

The play blends dream with reality. The dream scene and the light and shadow effect, the moonlit night and darkness create a surrealistic effect. But the play is an attempt to capture the intensity of the conflict. Principally, it dramatises the predicament of women in the conflict affected areas. The mother's visit to the battlefield and her direct encounter of the gruesome scene, her encounter of the wounded youths all of the same age as her son Kale who has disappeared, makes a blend of the raw human suffering and love, affection and pain. The humble life of Mayadevi and the old man who has lost his hand in the bigger war of the region, and the difficulties faced by women due to the war are brought under sharp focus in the play. The death of Mayadevi's husband in the war remote in time and place is contrasted with the war raging around them. The futility of mutual killings, and the irony involved in the youths' search for identities in a state of confusion shows that the battle has not created a clear picture of the times. The only impact we know of the war is summed up in Mayadevi's words – it is easy to flee in the moonlit night but difficult to hide, and you are all fighting an absurd battle, you are not sensitive to the value of human life.

Playwright: Prof. Abhi Subedi
Direction: Nisha Sharma Phokharel