KATHMANDU, JANUARY 15
After shutting down for nearly a decade since 2012, Aarohan Gurukul has resumed its theatrical activities again. An inaugural ceremony marked the reopening of the theatre school at Kunja Theatre, Thapagaun on January 14 – Harihar Sharma, Vice-Chancellor of Nepal Academy of Music and Drama, and Kiran Manandhar, Chancellor of the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts, jointly inaugurated the theatre school. Aarohan Gurukul’s production A Doll’s House was also staged during the opening ceremony.
In 2012, Gurukul lost its theatre space in Purano Baneshwore in mid-January after its infrastructure was demolished and Gurukul limited itself to a house in Aloknagar.
Since then the theatre group had been unable to manage space of its own or conduct regular theatrical activities.
Photo: THT
Now that it has returned after a long hiatus, Sunil Pokharel, Artistic Director of Aarohan Gurukul, is very happy. He said, “I feel so happy about this resumption.”
But he expressed his fear of “whether I will be able to continue with the theatre or not due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other circumstances.”
Nonetheless, Pokharel shared that they will be prioritising the new generation of actors to perform plays in the theatre.
As per Dipesh Bhandari, Coordinator of the theatre, Aarohan Gurukul has resumed its activities in coordination with the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC).
“The KMC will be supporting us for six months. After that, we will train a new batch of students at our theatre and stage the plays regularly – the plan is to stage one drama every month if there is no lockdown,” he said.
Two batches of theatre students passed out from Aarohan Gurukul before 2012. But after it shut down, they lacked the space to perform plays or run the theatre school. ” We were not able to utilise the land provided by the government in Bhrikutimandap due to the 2015 Earthquake. Following that, we did not receive any support from the government to continue our performance which led our students and artistes to go their way,” informed Bhandari.
Now, around seven such students are back together to be a part of the Aarohan Gurukul.
Along with conducting regular classes, the theatre school will also perform plays regularly from now onwards. We will be staging old plays with new performers or students. The school will stage six plays in the coming six months.
After that, five more plays will be performed every month,” Bhandari shared. A total of 11 plays will be staged till mid- January 2023. “In case there is a smart lockdown, we will continue staging plays, limiting audiences to 25 with safety measures,” said Bhandari.
Sharing the reason behind staging old productions and not creating new plays, Pokharel said, “The previous productions of Gurukul will be performed by the students of earlier batches if they can spare time for it.
Otherwise, new performers will be performing in the older productions. By staging old productions, we also want to test whether the new performers can perform just as well as the former actors of those productions,” Pokharel clarified.
A Doll’s House is being staged till February 5 every day at 4:30 pm.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 16, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.