this week will mark another celebration of international womens day feminism gender equality and misogyny were some of the topics college students of raipur highlighted through a recently staged street play at marine driveindependent theatre troupes from city colleges are telling various stories using the platform of street plays ashish chaubey a student of mba says right from the villages of chhattisgarh to bastar and tribal culture nukkad natak has a lot of importance in our culture and we dont want the art form to die out hence with some relevant topics we are staging plays across raipur to engage people in this artto be continually potent nukkad natak has to adapt to the changing times observes street play artiste ravi shukla the public today is new much more aware and one that at the touch of a button is connected to the globe the challenge is to convert this awareness into dialogue and possible action for this we have to change the format content and use vernacular language today characters are more realistic and raipur theatre groups are being politically incorrect so that the theatre can remain of the peoplestreet theatre as a concept came into the mainstream in chhattisgarh through the efforts of tribal artistesinitially street theatre came out from the culture wing of political parties mostly left oriented nukkad natak became the medium of bringing issues to the people in the 80s it became more active to the extent that the system became cautious of its power says avinash jha a student of theatre people of raipur too are really impressed with the emerging trend of street plays in the city many youngsters have formed independent theatre groups in the city and are staging plays based on social issues which are well received by the people says budding theatre actor avinash waghule using colourful props and choosing to crowd favourite places in the city like telibandha theatre groups pull in the audience by their talent and versatility the play we stage is not longer than 30 minutes and the challenge is to tell our story and deliver our message to people within that time frame if the play is longer than that the audience tends to lose interest says abha gupta a theatre artiste