THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘Souparnika’, a play originally scripted and directed by actor Narendra Prasad, will be staged at the Co-Bank Towers in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday at 6 pm. The play will mark the inauguration of the Narendra Prasad Theatre Festival to be held till Sunday.
‘Souparnika’ is one of the most critically acclaimed plays written by Narendra Prasad and is based on Kottarathil Sankunni’s Aithihyamala. It had won awards for best direction, script, actor and actress in the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi drama competition held in 1981. The play was staged under the banner of ‘Natygriham’, the troupe formed by the actor along with his contemporaries Murali, M V Gopakumar, P A M Rasheed, Aliyar and the like.
The drama troupe was active in the early 1980s, though it eventually became dormant. In 2013, M K Gopalakrishnan, who acted in the original production of Souparnika, took the initiative to revive the troupe. The five-day drama festival will feature other plays of Narendra Prasad including ‘Murajapathinu poya randu sancharikal’, ‘Marthanda Varma engane rakshappettu’, Suvarna Simhasanam’, ‘Ira’, and ‘Kumaran Varunnilla’.