Kathmandu, April 21 -- Amar Nyaupane's 'Seto Dharti' carries a legacy, a literary gravity, that makes its projection onto the theatre stage quite a task. This externalisation of the Madan Puraskar-winning novel offers the characters a physical presence through an ambitious and delicate undertaking.

Chanted by six pandits and one guru, the play opens with a mantra (sacred utterance). Subsequently, the guru's dialogue follows, "If you want to acquire shanti (peace), you must become a brikshya (tree)."

The stage visualisation, or perhaps the entire play, exists in duality. The stage's left part holds Tara's (played by Benisha Hamal) house in Devghat, and the right keeps her childhood home. Starting with Tara's monologue in the ghat (steps ...