Bhopal: A Hindi satire ‘The Flies’ was staged at Shaheed Bhawan on Friday. Based on French play ‘Les Mouches’ (The Flies), written by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1943, the play talks about existentialism.
It is an adaptation of the Electra myth, previously used by Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. The play recounts the story of Orestes and his sister Electra in their quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon, king of Argos, by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her husband Aegisthus, who had deposed and killed him.
The writer incorporates an existentialist theme into the play, having Electra and Orestes engaged in a battle with Zeus and his Furies, who are the gods of Argos and the centrepiece for self-abnegating religious rituals. This results in fear and a lack of autonomy for Zeus’s worshippers, who live in constant shame of their humanity.
The one-hour-forty minute play was shown through three acts. Directed by Dinesh Nair, translated into Hindi by Vallabh Siddharth, the realistic play was presented by Samantar, socio culture society, Bhopal. The ambience of Greece was created on stage by using suggestive set, costumes, lights, pros and music.
“The satire is quite relevant to the present system of our country especially through a dialogue of narrator ‘mai aisa raja banana chahta hun jiski koi praja na ho… .’. It talks about existentialism and meaning of freedom,” said director of the play Dinesh Nair.
Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying he always declined official honours and that, “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”
