Vijayawada: Historical drama on freedom struggle enthralls audience

Vijayawada: As part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, Saibaba Natyamandali sponsored by Dr Raman Foundation, Vijayawada, in association with Samskara Bharathi, Vijayawada division, Union Department of Culture, State government's South Central Zone cultural center, and Department of Language and Culture, has staged a historical drama 'Swaatantrya Sangramam', written and directed by Dr PVN Krishna.

The historical drama was presented in two parts. First part consists of acts related to struggle and agitations led by Mangal Pandey, Tantia Tope, Pridhviraj and Jhansi Lakshmi Bai. The play consisted of dance, folk arts, both verse and prose version. The drama starts with 'Burra Katha' narrating the story of pre-Independence.

The artistes tried to do justice to their roles. But the bouncing light of the LED screen dominated the artistes and their expressions. The concluding scene, which was depicting Jhansi, was good and the use of LED screen helped to get richness to that particular scene. Some scenes can be crisped for betterment of the play, it's observed.

Gorrela Ramama, Krishnamurthy and Srinivas engaged the audience with the narration of the drama through Burra Katha'. Anuradha, Ramanaiah, Rajasekhar, LSRK Prasad, Dr S Venkateswara Rao, E Pavan Kumar, Kaku Mallikarjuna Yadav, M Srinivas, K Livingston, Dr PVN Krishna, KRS Ganesh Kumar and others enacted in the drama. Music was composed by Kumara Suryanarayana and J Sravan Kumar. Dances were choreographed by K Vasudevarao and make up by BT Naidu and Venkataswami.

In a brief meeting, Minister for Endowments Velampalli Srinivasa Rao, MLA Malladi Vishnuvardhan, Chalavadi Mallikarjuna Rao, Deepak Kulkarni, Chalavadi Balaramaiah, Koneru Durga Prasad, Gummadi Gopalakrishna participated. Samskara Bharathi representatives Srinivas and Ramkumar organised the event.