Bidesiya: Insights into Bihar’s Folk Theatre

I have been fascinated by this folk play since I read about it, and I have had the ardent desire to watch its staging. Luckily, I got the chance to watch it while I was pursuing my ‘Theatre Appreciation Course’ at the National School of Drama (NSD). The year I pursued my course (2025), it became part of Bhartiya Rang Mahaotsav (BRM 25), unlike earlier when it used to be held separately.

Title: Bidesiya

Written by: Bhikhari Thakur

Genre: Folk Theatre (Bihar)

Language: Bhojpuri

Theatre: NSD (Open air)

Date of staging: 29th January 2025

Running Time: 1 hr 45 minutes

Director: Sanjay Upadhyaya

Theatre Company: Nirman Kala Manch, Patna

I’d never expected that a folk play would draw this much crowd but my view changed when I saw the open-air stage brimming with people, all equally enthusiastic to watch the performance, despite the fact that it was winter. For me, it was the first opportunity to watch a folk performance and that too, on a national stage which is also reiterated by the anchor.

The play started with a bhajan, setting the tone of the performance. A group of musicians with different traditional instruments such as Dhol, Tabla, Basuri, Pakhawach, Jhal, and Manjira, Harmonium sat upstage on elevated platforms (you can see in the picture above). The downstage is reserved for the performance. Specific to any folk play, a larger part of it comprises folk songs and folk dance. There were the choruses in this play. The first one is the musicians and singers and the second is the group of dancers who come to the stage at several points to reflect on the situations in a better way and entertain the audience with their humour. The story and actions in Bidesiya are also mostly sung. In between, the characters converse in Bhojpuri. This folk play will take you through a range of emotions such as pathos, humour and laughter. Also, if you belong to such a region, you can relate to the play due to the regional language and the theme. To make the play contemporary, the incidents from the present and the technology have been used, which we don’t see in folk plays usually.

What the play is about?

Bhikari Thakur worked on the theme of the plight of rural wives whose husbands migrate to another city in search of livelihood and forget them. The husbands start their own lives there by taking a woman even in wedlock and not intending to visit their village and their family. The issue of migration was very real in those days. Unlike today, there were no cell phones to establish contact. The letter was the only medium but the husbands got so busy in their lives and with other women that they didn’t consider it necessary to send one. Then the wives request an older person, who happened to visit the same city to bring the whereabouts of his pati-parmeshwar.

Comments

The play was enacted well under the able guidance of Sanjay Upadhyaya but I feel that improvements are necessary in the coming times to maximise its reach and impact. A couple of times during the play, the audience gets bored due to the repeated scenes/scenes running for longer duration. Also, the play is entirely in Bhojpuri, which isn’t much popular in other states. Hence, the people belonging to the other region may lose track of the performance. The guy sitting beside me left in between because he was an Oria and couldn’t understand much. So, the dialogues can be constructed in Hindi at several points if not the folk song. From the technical part, the foot mics didn’t really work for the central characters performing on the downstage. The dialogues were feeble. It should be improved or steno masks can be brought into use.