One of man’s most primitive instincts has been to tell, and to tell a well-crafted story is indeed an art. Technicolour Dream 2 is also a tale told in different colours and hues by the director Rabijita Gogoi. Although the principal colour of this play is Nagaland, but it cuts across geographical terrains to speak of civil uprisings, movements, identical underground movements and yearning for self-discovery. The tale primarily speaks of Nagaland, but it also raises identical questions which can affect and impact anyone who is a part of the ethnic tapestry and strife.

Multiplicity is a buzzword in today’s socio-political context. Various elements of tradition, modernity, virtues and vices, ideologies and lost values, all juggle to find place in this play. Critical identity questions are raised again and again in the play. Along with it is woven the different threads of multiplicity, which, if on one hand adds colour to the traditional Naga society, but on the other hand, drugs, arms, violence, abuse are also colours that have tended to tear the rich fabric of the multi-dimensional and multi-structural Naga society. The story is non-linear and tells a tale with personal touches of fragmented thoughts, ideas, lives and of society. But most important, there is an underlying current of fear and terror that runs through society, which is well depicted in the play through a maze of actions, music and dialogues.

The identity threat by the Naga people, and also to the Naga people, is what perhaps attracted Rabijita to tell this tale of ethnicity and diversity of Nagaland. But it is not common to other such terrains. There is a kind of raw passion and spontaneity about the play, which the director highlights. It is a musical that attempts to present cross currents of uncertainty, distress, social unrest, sometimes satirically and sometimes even bordering on the absurd. A fragmented pattern is adopted to present a collage of the past and present of Nagaland. Young minds and a fresh imagination depict a tale of generations at the crossroads, of breaking down of age-old social values by the present in search of commercial and material benefits. All in all, Technicolour Dream 2 is a collage of identity politics, conflict of land, people, cultures, and an attempt to harmonise diverse features of Nagaland.

Meenakshi Gautam