How Artists Brought Mahabharata To Life In Play ‘18 Days — Dusk Of An Era’ In Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium

The War of Kurukshetra is being enacted live. The narration starts with a flashback that leads to day one. Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers in the epic Mahabharata, sees the army and his heart starts beating faster. He is overwhelmed as he has to take up arms against his family members. Then Lord Krishna comes to him and recites Bhagwat Gita and he regains his calmness and concentration — and the battle begins.

Sanjaya, who has a divine vision, is reporting whatever happens in the war to King Dhritarashtra, a blind king of the Kuru kingdom, in his palace. Both are on a LED screen, on a different sphere. Dhritarashtra is witnessing the war, listening carefully to Sanjaya and lamenting the deaths of his sons, an important imagery of the epic portraying a fight between Dharma (duties, not essentially religion) against Adharma.

Amid the blood bath, the war is charged with all kinds of emotions —anger, love, hate, disgust, and revenge— being transported to the viewers by various art forms. The use of animations, magic tricks, costuming, make-up, lighting, and sound design infuses colour and excitement into the performance.

This was a dance musical performed in Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium – “18 Days - Dusk of an Era” by Prabhat, The Temple of Art, a Bangalore-based art institute — an endeavour exploring the epic. Over 50 artists brought the Mahabharata to life on stage, encompassing various classical dance forms like Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and martial arts, and contemporary art forms. They took inspiration from Sage Bharat Muni’s musical treatise Natyashastra to make their performance appealing and to strike a chord with viewers of all age groups. The dance musical infuses modern animation techniques, martial arts, and levitation techniques, along with classical dance forms to hook the viewers. 

Bharat R Prabhath and Sharat R Prabhath, Art director and Performer at Prabhat, say, “18 Days — A Dusk of an Era, essentially means 18 days of the war of Kurukshetra. Our performance answers various questions of Mahabharata like why Karna died, why the war happened, and how it happened.” 

The production is based on sage Vyas’s Mahabharata, because “it carries the soul of the Mahabharata”. Thus, the play did not delve into various other interpretations of the epic. Concept, direction, and choreography were handled by both siblings. They also worked on music composition, scripting, and creative and technical direction, among other things.

“The play is an experiment that demonstrates the creative outpour, ethnicity, classical dance, drama, and classical music, and comprehensively portrays the Kurukshetra War in Mahabharata,” says Sharat, who wrote the script of the dance musical, adding, “The aim of this performance is to unfurl the maze of events orchestrated in the Kurukshetra war, navigating through plots and schemes by tracing the single-most line of truth, the law of Dharma.”

The production aims to answer how and why for dharma, Krishna takes certain decisions and employs certain strategies, and why he took the side of Pandavas.

Sharat says, “The reasons are societal and universal. Dharma has to be followed.” 

For the betterment of society and to establish the order based on Dharma, Krishna had to do what he did in Mahabharata “which is the sole of the epic”, says Sharat.

The production includes important episodes about the central characters of Mahabharata like Bheeshma, Karna, Abhimanyu, and Duryodhana. The target audience of the performance was Generation Z —or Gen Z— born after the mid-late 1990s. Sharat believes that the new generation should know about our roots and the epic “but the challenge is how we grab their attention and keep them hooked [so] we focused our performance keeping their questions in mind also”.

Remarkably, the number 18 has a lot of significance in the Mahabharata because the epic has 18 chapters and the battle lasted for 18 days. There were 11 Akshouhini soldiers for the Kauravas and seven Akshouhini soldiers for the Pandavas, for a combined total of 18. Thus, the dance musical also runs for 18-19 minutes. 

However, there are not many more effective ways to recount the epic. The current generation struggles to understand the concepts and morals it conveys and lacks opportunities to judge them. In sharing the tale and addressing the issues facing a new era, thus, art is essential. Additionally, art places the epic in context and defines new relationships with it. The play 18 Days – A Dusk of an Era is the crucial to explore the epic and our relationship with it.