Mysuru: A two-day Women’s Solo Theatre Festival was organised at Kiru Rangamandira (Mini Theatre) in Kalamandira premises recently, under the aegis of city-based theatre troupe Rangavalli.

Day-1 featured a grand performance of Mysuru’s woman entrepreneur, Srividya Kamath (of ‘Anubhuthi’), who has spread her business of ‘light’ through aromatic candle-making across the globe. The story of light, flame and darkness, with the name ‘Deepadharini’, was a power-packed performance of 1 hour, enthralling the audience.

Deepadharini, One-Woman Show was an absolutely sublime theatre  — a 70-minute rollercoaster that took the audience on the most unexpected of rides. ‘Deepadharini’ oscillated between the relatably realistic and completely imaginative narrative styles, with sarcastic humour.

Performance of Florence Nightingale’s life story was very informative in the play. Hardly a few of us know that Florence Nightingale, 1st Nurse of the world, also was well-known as ‘lady with the hammer’ and ‘lady with the lamp’ and she also invented Pie chart, histogram, polar chart etc., to statistically represent the data of her findings about the injured soldier’s health through her interviews.

The solo performance is being performed in 5 different languages — Konkani, Kannada, Hindi, English and Tamil. Srividya Kamath, a Kendra Sahitya Akademy Board of Advisor, for Konkani language has herself translated the script of ‘Deepadharini’, originally written by Sudha Adukala. The play has been directed by Dr. Sripad Bhat, and music is composed by Anush Shetty.

All the audience, who watched the play, received a small aromatic candle surprise from organisers, Rangavalli, making the event a memorable one.

On day-2, ‘Sakkubai Kaamwali’ was staged. Sakkubai, story of a maid, which carried quite a lot of humour, took us to the real-life scenarios of maids who work in all our homes.

Nudi Sudarshan (of ‘Nudiranga’), a software engineer by profession, effortlessly made her debut in the solo play with great impact on audience’s minds.

An illiterate maid, Sakku, knows the importance of education and in all struggles of life, she ensures to give her daughter the education she deserves. At the end, in a very heart touching scenario, the daughter tells the mother to start her journey of education when she graduates.

The play, originally written by Bollywood artiste, Nadira Babbar, is translated by D.S. Chougale to Kannada and directed by eminent theatre personality of Mysuru, Hulugappa Kattemani.