Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction returns to Delhi on December 13

A musician is no less than a magician, blinding us with the power of voice and rhythm. Now imagine being mesmerised by 38 of them at once. That is the allure of renowned thespian Roysten Abel’s famous production The Manganiyar Seduction that reels one into the melodious renditions of Sufi classics attributed to 18th-century poet Bulleh Shah.

Director Roysten Abel on his production The Manganiar Seduction

The production is as much a visual treat as a musical one. Thirty-eight performers sit in individual glowing pods that light up as each musician takes their turn, a dramatic arrangement inspired by two unconnected worlds – Amsterdam’s red-light district and Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal, with red-curtained cubicles stacked row upon row. As lights flicker and layered rhythms unfold, the stage feels enchanting and almost cinematic.

This hypnotic, larger-than-life experience returns to Delhi next Saturday, on December 13, almost poetically to the same city where it premiered in 2006 at the Osian’s Cinefan Festival.

The idea for the show began when Abel was travelling in Spain for another production with street performers, including two Manganiyar musicians. The Manganiyars, a community of hereditary and folk musicians from Rajasthan’s Thar desert, carry centuries-old traditions of devotional and celebratory music. Once royal court musicians, today they are invited to perform at weddings, harvest festivals, and community gatherings.

“Seduced” by their sound, Abel returned to India looking for a way to transform what he had experienced into performance, and what emerged was, as he calls it, a “scratch version” of The Manganiyar Seduction. Abel sensed its potential from the beginning. Grounded in the folk traditions of the Manganiyar, it was built to travel. “I knew it was something unique,” he says. “I thought it would travel, but I never imagined it would travel for almost 20 years.”

Since then, the show has crossed continents — from America, where he staged the performance more than 30 times to teary-eyed audience, to Dammam in Saudia Arabia, where he recalls the crew being swarmed for selfies.  

The long slow evolution

Abel’s relationship with the ensemble has evolved alongside theirs, and he sounds especially fond when talking about the show’s Khartal-wielding  conductor, Devu Khan. “There is no concept of a conductor in Indian folk music,” he says. “When I told him he would have to conduct, he said, ‘No, sir, I can’t.’” Over time, Khan learned to guide dozens of performers stacked in a three-storey formation. “Now he has blossomed into a fantastic conductor. People are blown away by the way he does it.”

The musicians too, Abel says, have undergone their own artistic evolution. Players who arrived as rookies in their instruments are now masters. “Over the years, they groom themselves into a maestro. Witnessing that journey for over 20 years is a privilege — not even as a director, but as a simple observer.”

Despite two decades of refinement, the production has never been radically reworked. “Sometimes a section goes, another comes in,” Abel says. “After a few years, the narrative becomes clearer. You see where the show should go, and you remove obstacles to get there.”

Music is universal

The Manganiyars sing in regional tongues — Marwari, Sindhi, and Saraiki — commonly spoken across Rajasthan’s Thar desert. Yet despite the linguistic barriers, their music and the production have been embraced worldwide. Abel, an NSD passout, who is now based in Kannur — he grew up in Ooty and Bengaluru on rock and pop music — believes that not understanding the lyrics can actually deepen the experience.  

“When you understand something, your intellect is at work,” he says. “But when you don’t, it becomes a pure immersive experience.” He recalls spending two weeks in Spain with the musicians, captivated by their sound. That, he believes, is why audiences continue to return — because the emotion reaches you first, before meaning even arrives. 

After 19 years, Abel says the work has changed him as both a theatre-maker and a person, just as it has transformed the ensemble. “It has changed me fully,” he says. Since then, he has continued exploring where music and theatre intersect. In his production, The Kitchen, for instance, he staged 12 mizhavu (a pot-shaped traditional percussion instrument) drummers from Kerala, their percussion forming a backdrop while a couple cooks payasam live on stage; in A Hundred Charmers, he brought together more than 100 snake charmers. 

But beneath it all, working with the Manganiyars became his first real exchange with musicians — an experience that sharpened his artistic instincts. “That was actually my schooling in music, in many ways. It automatically follows me in whatever I do — it’s an integral part of me.” More than that, he says, “their simplicity, innocence and generosity” have shaped him personally. “It’s been 19 years of growth as a human being.”

The Manganiyar Seduction will be performed at Omaxe Chowk, Chandni Chowk, at 6 pm.

This article is written by Adithi Reena Ajith