Among the many tiatr directors who scripted and stagedreligious or passion plays during the Lenten season, the late J P Souzalin stood out for his excellentdramatisation and stage sets. He has staged several religious tiatrs during hiscareer and is well remembered for his tiatr, ‘Sat Dukhi’, ‘Orkache Bara Mister’and ‘Sam Francisk Xavier’, which actually set a bench mark for otherplaywrights to follow. Prem Kumar too tried his hand at religious tiatrs andstaged ‘Maria Magdalena’.
Amongst the early playwrights, we have ‘Pai Tiatrist’, JoaoAgostinho Fernandes who produced and staged a religious play ‘Padre Jose Vaz’.
Among the present day playwrights who have producedreligious plays during the Lenten season, are Fr Planton Faria, The PilarFathers, Fr Jose Anton Da Costa, Fr Conceicao D’Silva, Fr Nevel Gracias,Ligorio Fernandes and Simon Gonsalves. Prince Jacob has also successfullystaged several religious plays on the lives of saints of the Roman CatholicChurch. He is, however, one of the few playwrights who do not stage his showsduring the lent season and takes a well-deserved break during this time.
Among the few playwrights who produce these plays, Fr NevelGracias has had the distinction of staging Lenten plays during the season forthe last 16 years without a single break. This is his 17th year of producingand staging the same. Fr Nevel Gracias is one of the only playwrights who has asteady performance of Lenten plays and has achieved the milestone of stagingmore than 50 shows each of them during the days of lent.
As many senior tiatr fans admit, in earlier times, thestaging of tiatrs other than religious plays would come to a standstill duringthe Lenten season. But, it is not so now. The trend has changed and tiatrsother than Lenten plays are also being staged during the time of lent, andthere are takers for the same. One of the reasons could be there a just a fewplaywrights who specialise in producing these religious or Lenten plays.
Tiatr Academy of Goa would do well to introduce a specialscheme in the future to encourage young playwrights to try their hand atproducing and staging Lenten plays depicting biblical teachings. This stepwould go a long way in reviving the age old practice of producing Lenten playsfocusing on the passion of Christ which is very much on the decline in recentyears.
