Tomazinho Cardozo is the former president of the Tiatr Academy of Goa
The 38th Tiatr Competition 2012-13 organised by Kala AcademyGoa, which commenced with the staging of the tiatr ‘Tension’ on September 24,ended with the performance of the last tiatr ‘Osmitai’ on November 14. Awardsfor performance, direction, acting, singing, script writing, stage setting,light effects, background music, live music and so on were announced. Manyartistes have bagged numerous awards but the real hero of Kala Academy’s 38th TiatrCompetition is undoubtedly Kamlakant Chari, a well-known and an innovativestage set designer.
A meaningfully designed stage set makes a lot of differenceand creates an appropriate atmosphere for the performers to performeffectively. It provides enough space for the arrangement and movement of theactors. The set expresses the mood of the play. It provides information aboutthe locale and the time of the play and it makes the performance visuallyinteresting. Taking all these aspects into consideration, Kamlakant Chari hashelped 27 directors/producers of tiatrs of the 30 tiatrs that participated inthe competition, by designing and erecting their sets. Hence, Chari can becalled the real hero of the 38th Tiatr Competition.
Any stage set has to be designed as per the demand of thestory of the tiatr and every tiatr that participated in the tiatr competitionhad a different tale to tell. The artiste in Chari fulfilled the needs of theproducers and directors of 27 tiatrs so that they could make their performancesas realistic as possible. Kamlakant Chari does not have stage setting materialwhich is enough for all of these different performances. At the most he mayhave material enough for five or six different stage sets. Yet, he managed toprovide different stage sets for 27 different tiatrs with varied themes andthat too with nominal charges.
It is not only the tiatrs in the Kala Academy’s yearly tiatrCompetitions that needs help from Chari as far as stage setting is concerned,but also practically all the commercial tiatr directors too depend on him forstage setting when they stage the performance of their tiatrs in Tiswadi,Bardez and in the surrounding areas. Assuch, he is the unknown hero of tiatr as a whole when it comes to staging of thetiatr in the north of Goa.
Kamlakant Chari is serving the Goan Tiatr for the lastalmost 45 years. He started to provide stage sets for Konkani tiatrs andMarathi ‘natoks’ staged in the villages since his childhood. On the tiatr stagehe became very popular because he had the opportunity to design the stage setsof the tiatrs directed by the stalwarts of Tiatr stage namely Jacinto Vaz, MBoyer, Father Freddy J D Costa, Remmie Colaco and others. Among the present daydirectors of tiatrs, I do not think that there is anyone who has not requiredthe help of Kamlakant Chari to erect the sets for his/her tiatr. Thus,Kamlakant Chari continues to be a very important back stage artiste of thetiatr.
His dedicated attitude prompted Tiatr Academy of Goa tohonour him with the ‘Life Time Contribution to Tiatr Award’. He is also therecipient of Goa State Cultural Award amongst others. As long as KamlakantChari is active on the tiatr stage, the producers and directors of tiatr willhave no problems in staging their tiatrs in the North of Goa. In his absence,the directors of tiatr will have to shell out a large amount of money to get anappropriate stage setting for their tiatrs.
