Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe

Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (Silence! The Court Is in Session) is a Marathi play written by playwright Vijay Tendulkar and first performed in 1967. The play was written in 1963, for Rangayan, a theatre group, though it was performed much later.

The play was based on a 1956 short-story, ‘Die Panne’ (Traps) by Swiss playwright, Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

Translations

The play has since been translated into some sixteen languages in India and abroad, B.B.C. showed its English version, filmed by Satyadev Dubey [2] Actor-director, Om Shivpuri, directed the Hindi translation of the play as, ‘Khamosh! Adaalat Jaari Hai’. The play had his wife actress, Sudha Shivpuri, in the lead role, and is still considered an important production in the theatre history of India.


Synopsis


The play is political and social satire on middle-class society's hypocrisy [4].

It is set as a play-within-a-play, where a travelling amateur theatre group, makes an unscheduled stop at a village. There to pass time the cast members stage a mock trial, of a fellow cast member, Miss Benare, who is unmarried, sexually exploited and had earlier aborted a child to keep her honour.

During the course of the play, she is 'charged' of child abortion (Broon Hatya), and as the charges get more vicious and personal, she can't take them anymore, as she is reminded of her predicament.

Finally she breaks down, revealing the true story behind it all, and also the hegemony and hypocrisy of male cast members comes into the light, who like their counterpart in the society are not blameless themselves, while they still find it easy to point fingers at a woman's character.



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 (National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama) Award" in 1970 for playwriting


Film adaptation


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 [5], and is still considered one of India’s finest films [6].

It marked the debut of actors Amrish Puri and Amol Palekar [7], and also 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 [8] Govind Nihalani also co-produced the film with Satyadev Dubey [9]

Lastly, this was also Vijay Tendulkar's first screenplay, who went on to write landmark films like Nishant, Aakrosh, Ardh Satya and Umbartha


Film CastArvind Deshpande

Sulbha Deshpande
Amrish Puri
Amol Palekar
Eknath Hattagadi