A question frequently asked about Nepali theater is, "Why (so many) foreign plays?"

I may not have staged a foreign play under my leadership or direction. Yet, as a member of the Nepali theater, I have also faced this question many times. This question in itself is not unnatural, but it is not innocent in itself either. Therefore, the intention behind the question, the economics and politics it creates, makes me want to question it. 

Because we have heard this question many times, in some cases we ourselves have also asked the same question. But I wonder if another question that needs to be asked has been overlooked in the shadow of this question. The question that should have been asked should have been ‘Why (original) Nepali play?’ Or should it have been!

‘Why foreign play?’ When such a question is asked repeatedly, I have found that the curiosity is less and the accusations are more. When accusations are being leveled in this way, what is the mind of those who are writing, directing, and staging Nepali plays after examining foreign plays that are considered powerful? Is this question doing them an injustice or prejudice? 

If we look at the practice of world theater, from Sophocles, Aristophanes to Shakespeare, Molière, Gogol, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, JB Priestley, Reginald Rose to John Fosse, Rajiv Joseph, and others, writers are being reborn not only in their own language, but also in countless languages ​​and geographies. Nepali theater was not and is not obliged to remain separate from this. Therefore, along with the plays of those playwrights, especially the plays of Indian playwrights, Nepali theater has been colorful. 

Foreign plays are a school for Nepali theater. Strong theatrical structure as a craft of playwriting is the main feature of those plays. They became the basis for learning theatrical structure, writing craft-style, understanding the rhythm of acting and presentation, and developing theatrical language. In that sense, translation, interpretation, adaptation, and staging of foreign plays in Nepali theater is not a weakness, but rather a necessity to some extent? The problem is certainly not in the translation, the problem is in the translation or was it that the foreign writer was too fond of the play? 

Art and literature raise the issue of sexuality, but art and literature do not have gender. It discusses the period and time consciousness, but it does not have an age. It depicts a culture and environment, but it does not have a geography. Therefore, the play itself is not foreign, but the subject and context that the playwright connects can be connected to geography. It is not a problem to stage a play written in a different geography on a Nepali stage, the problem can also be in the presentation. Like the text, the question of whether the theatrical presentation was also translated and adapted may be curious. 

Along with this, some of the answers that came with the discussion of foreign plays are not without problems. Generally, the answers given by the elders who have staged many foreign plays or contemporary playwrights at the time of performing foreign plays are the same. Which answer, like the question ‘Why foreign plays?’, seems to be less and less of an accusation. 

We can puff up our noses with praise for foreign dramas, saying that they are structurally and theatrically strong. That being said, we certainly cannot underestimate the writing that has been and is being done in Nepali drama. Therefore, these answers are as easy as they are unfair.

Nepali dramas have been written and are being written by many writers and literary figures, including Balkrishna Sam, Gopal Prasad Rimal, Govinda Bahadur Malla ‘Gothale’, Vijay Malla, Hridayachandrasingh Pradhan, Satyamohan Joshi, Dhruvachandra Gautam, Mohanraj Sharma, Ashesh Malla, Sarubhakta, Abhi Subedi, Vijay Bhakta, etc. They have been staged and are being staged. They have influenced and are also influencing. Therefore, those answers given in a roundabout way can do injustice to these writers.

If we remember not only what we did not get, but also the positive aspects of what we did get, we will also find warmth and light there. When we look at the current theater, it is not right to ignore the Nepali plays that come here occasionally and continuously. The writer Kumar Nagarkoti, who recently held a musical evening of poetry 'Yadakada', does not write plays only occasionally, he is writing continuously. Sanjeev Upreti, Yug Pathak, Rajan Mukarung, Chandra Prasad Pandey, Gilu Ratos have written plays while writing stories, poems, and criticism.

Dayahang Rai, Ashant Sharma, Ghimire Yubaraj, Puru Lamsal, Sulakshan Bharati, Ram KAC, Nazir Hussain are writing plays regularly, I myself am also in this line. We are writing them in visual language on stage as well. The Nepali plays staged by Birendra Hamal, Pushkar Gurung, Praveen Puma, Rajan Khatiwada, Bimal Subedi, and Nawaraj Budhathoki are remarkable. ‘Foreign drama?’ The Nepali (original) dramas directed and produced by senior playwrights Sunil Pokharel, Anup Baral, and others, who are often in the circle of the question, should not be ignored.

Even if we look only at the last year, most of the plays staged have been Nepali plays. This last year alone, directors Praveen Khatiwada, Ramhari Dhakal, Pashupati Rai, Diya Maske, Buddhi Tamang, Umesh Tamang, Somnath Khanal, Sudam CK, Sijan Dahal, Jenny Sunuwar, Kabita Nepal, Parivartan, Anil Subba, and others, who have colored the stage with drama at various theaters and theater festivals, have staged Nepali plays.

In the past, Chhimalka Sanyog Guragain, Pratiksha Kattel, Sangeeta Thapa, Vedang Rai, Navin Chandra Aryal, Anup Neupane, Pratisha Adhikari, Sudip Khatiwada, Mukti, and others have done the work of painting the walls of Nepali drama writing. However, most of the time, the writer has directed it himself or the director has written it himself. 

If we do not ask ‘Why Nepali drama?’, it would be unfair to these efforts. If you are a theater lover or a theater artist, you will remember the many smiling, energetic faces who write and direct Nepali dramas. You can add many names to this list, where your own name may also be! 

Therefore, the problem is not only a lack of writing, but also of trust. It is not that the mentality of considering original drama as a risk, underestimating the audience and associating experimentation with failure does not exist in our theater. 

In the debate that Nepali writers are not writing drama, it is also said that writers have not been attracted to it because drama writing is different, technical and complex than other genres of literature. Drama is truly a complex genre. Here, not only language is written, but also the structure of place, time, body, silence, dialogue and action-reaction is written. It is not a genre that ends up on the writer’s desk like poetry or stories. Even after writing, it is rewritten by the director, the actors, the stage and the audience. This ‘loss of control’ nature may have kept many writers away from drama. But what the writer needs to understand is that the drama director is another writer, who writes the drama on stage through imagination and direction. 

If complexity is the reason, then poetry and narrative are no less complex genres. Therefore, it may be incomplete to blame ‘complexity’ for not writing drama. The problem lies more in the complexity of the drama than in the lack of a procedural commitment to making that complexity easier. On the world stage, playwriting is not a solitary process; workshops, draft readings, collective rewriting and critical dialogue are part of its process. In our country, playwriting is often seen as an end product, not a process.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw may have pointed out this very complexity when he said, ‘Playwriting is not just writing dialogue, it is the engineering of human conflict.’ In this sense, writing a play is about combining the mathematics of scene, plot, dialogue, time, silence, and conflict, and tying emotions into a structure. This demand for technical awareness may have discouraged many writers from writing plays. But this complexity is the beauty of plays and theater. We, as theater artists, also have an equal hand in not making

s compulsory to inspire enthusiasm. Once, I had requested a respected writer (many of whose stories have been adapted into plays by the director himself) to write a play in the same way. His answer made my mind go ‘Oh’. He said, ‘My next collection of stories is coming out, many of the stories in it are suitable for plays, why don’t you adapt them and make them into plays?’ Thinking of that, I still go ‘Oh’ and am amazed. Oh, we turned stories into plays out of the necessity and compulsion of the stage, the writer has found that ease. We have not developed the habit of writing plays.