''Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe'' (''Silence! The Court Is in Session'') is a
Marathi play written by Indian playwright
Vijay Tendulkar in 1963 and first performed in 1967, directed by Arvind Deshpande, with
Sulbha Deshpande as the main lead. Film received
National Film Award for Best Marathi Feature Film At
19th National Film Awards.
Sulabha Deshpande Won
Maharashtra State Film Award for Best Actress.
The play was written in 1963, for Rangayan, a Mumbai-based theatre group, though it was performed much later. It was inspired after the playwright overheard the conversation amongst the members of amateur theatre group traveling on Mumbai local train to perform a mock-trial at
Vile Parle suburb. The play was based on a 1956 novel, ''
Die Panne'' (Traps) by Swiss playwright
Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Translations
The play has since been translated into 16 languages in India and abroad. The BBC showed its English version, filmed by
Satyadev Dubey. Actor-director,
Om Shivpuri
Om Shivpuri (14 July 1938 – 15 October 1990) was an Indian theatre actor-director and character actor in Hindi films.
A National School of Drama, New Delhi alumnus, Shivpuri became the first chief of the National School of Drama Repertory C ...
, directed the Hindi translation of the play as ''Khamosh! Adaalat Jaari Hai''. The play had his wife
Sudha Shivpuri in the lead role and is regarded as a key milestone in the history of Indian Theatre.
Plot
A group of teachers plan to stage a play in a village. When a cast-member does not show up, a local stagehand is asked to replace him. An improvised, free-flowing 'rehearsal' is arranged and a mock trial is staged to make the novice understand court procedures. A (mock) charge of infanticide is leveled against Miss Benare, another cast-member.
All of a sudden, the pretend-play turns into an accusatory game when it emerges from the trial that Miss Benare is carrying an out-of-wedlock child from her failed illicit relationship with Professor Damle, the missing cast-member.
Critical acclaim
Its playwright, Vijay Tendulkar, got national recognition in the form of the
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Award for drama in 1970 and
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (IAST: Saṅgīta Nāṭaka Akādamī Puraskāra), also known as the Akademi Puraskar, is an award given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama. It is the highest Indian recogni ...
(National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama) in 1970 for playwriting.
Adaptations
Noted Marathi playwright and stage director
Satyadev Dubey directed a
Marathi film based on the play, with the same name in 1971. ''Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe'' started the New Cinema movement in
Marathi cinema
Marathi cinema is the segment of Cinema of India, Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Marathi language, which is widely spoken in the state of Maharashtra. It is based out of Mumbai. It is the oldest film ind ...
and is considered one of India’s finest films.
It marked the debut of actors
Amrish Puri and
Amol Palekar
Amol Palekar (born 24 November 1944) is an Indian actor, director and producer of Hindi and Marathi cinema.
Early life and education
Palekar was born to Kamlakara and Suhasini Palekar in a Marathi language, Marathi speaking middle-class family ...
, and of
Govind Nihalani for whom this was his first film as a full-fledged cinematographer; till then, he had worked an assistant to
Guru Dutt’s cinematographer V.K. Murthy. Govind Nihalani co-produced the film with Satyadev Dubey. This was
Vijay Tendulkar's first screenplay, who went on to write films like ''Nishant'', ''Aakrosh'', ''Ardh Satya'' and ''
Umbartha''.
Indian film director Ritesh Menon adapted the play into a
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
-language film titled (after the name of the play's Hindi translation) ''Khamosh Adalat Jaari Hai'' in 2017.
Film cast
* Arvind Deshpande
*
Sulbha Deshpande as Leela Benare
*
Amrish Puri
*
Amol Palekar
Amol Palekar (born 24 November 1944) is an Indian actor, director and producer of Hindi and Marathi cinema.
Early life and education
Palekar was born to Kamlakara and Suhasini Palekar in a Marathi language, Marathi speaking middle-class family ...
* Eknath Hattagadi
Further reading
* ''Silence! The Court Is in Session'' (Three Crowns). Priya Adarkar (Translator), Oxford University Press, 1979. .
* Collected Plays in Translation: Kamala, Silence! the Court Is in Session, Sakharam Binder, the Vultures, Encounter in Umbugland, Ghashiram Kotwal, a Friend's Story, Kanyadaan. New Delhi, 2003, Oxford University Press. .
References
*
External links
*
Film Awards for Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe
{{authority control
Adaptations of works by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Postmodern plays
Plays by Vijay Tendulkar
1967 plays
1970s Marathi-language films
Indian plays adapted into films
Marathi-language plays
Plays based on novels