Dhatureko Katha, a street play produced by Marshyangdi Natya Samuha, was staged at Beshisahar, Lamjung. The first staging took place on Saturday and more will follow in the coming days.

The play is directed by Kedar Bohara, who is a member of Marshyangdi Natya Samuha.

The play was organised by Radio Marshyangdi, which airs plays produced by the group every week.

“The news of girls being trafficked from remote Nepali villages kept coming after the quake. To raise awareness among the villagers and to eradicate this social problem, we came up with the idea of staging a street-play,” said Mina Gurung, director of Radio Marshyangdi. “We will be organising similar plays in various remote parts of the district in coming days.”

The play explores the theme of girl-trafficking and how women have become more vulnerable to trafficking in the days after the earthquakes. The organisers hope that staging it on the streets will raise awareness about the problem.

The story of the play is set in a remote village of Lamjung, and it reflects the milieu where the drama was staged on Saturday. In the play, the antagonist, a trafficker played by Himal Majakoti, under

the ruse that he is an agent for a well-known company, gets young women to travel with him to India in the hopes of getting a good job and education. The protagonist, Muna (Ganga Nepali), manages to escape from the traffickers and returns to her village and tells her father, Dhature (Bhuwan Singh Pariyar) about the agent’s intentions. Against this backdrop the rest of the drama plays out in a way that both entertains and educates the audience about the particulars of trafficking.

Street plays have in recent years been increasingly adopted as a genre to spread awareness by social organisations and theatre troupes.