PLAYS ON TAGORE’S WORKS....a different interpretation

PLAYS ON TAGORE’S WORKS....a different interpretation

On the occasion of Tagore’s sesquicentennial year, plays on Tagore pieces ranging from his dramas to novels, novellas, short stories and even poems have been staged by different theatre groups.  Adaptations and diverse interpretive versions of the plays were staged that clearly indicates the deep influence Tagore works have cast on the present generation of young theatre-makers.  These works are not to be classed with the productions which tend to dismantle the original works and build a new one in its place yet not acknowledging the truth. However, the four works that I have picked for our discussion are based on three of Tagore’s plays and the fourth one has been worked out on a poem by him.

Prachyanat, a group from Dhaka, Bangladesh, presented Raja....ebong onyannyo in the 27^th National Drama Festival of Nandikar, as a tribute to Tagore. As the name suggested the Dhaka production did not proclaim that it was an original Tagore piece but was based on one of Tagore’s very difficult symbolic plays, Raja. This play along with other symbolic and allegorical plays was the fruit of Tagore’s spiritual enlightenment that was evident in his works in the Geetali-Geetimalya-Geetanjali era, and thereafter. He had written to C.F.Andrews in 1914, the year The King of the Dark Chamber, his translation of Raja, was published, that the prying inquisitorial mind would always fail to accept or acknowledge the simple ways of life. In the drama, too, this was what he had wanted the world to see. Azad Abul Kalam, the director, writing about the play he had composed says that “Humanity has become the major casualty in this era of extreme decadence. Every moment we are tempted not to believe ourselves, our senses. Lack of respect for other race, religion, rights, and rites has resulted in social transgression, cultural subversion, and economic and political aggression. The contextual relevance of ‘Raja’ in modern society has inspired and emboldened me to integrate novel dimensions to the proscenium concept of Tagorian performance. ”

And so one finds a different ambience even before the play starts. The door to the auditorium has a poster inviting immigration to USA and a number of men in military mufti with machine guns in hand loitering in and around the auditorium as well as on the stage. The play takes the viewers directly into the environment of uncertainties, mistrust, distrust and lust that has been the order of the present international scene, especially post-9/11. The director introduces all the Kanchi kings of the present world at the very beginning of the play. He finds a similarity in the new face of American terror with that of the attempts of the Kanchi kings to seize Queen Sudarsana with the help of the imposter Subarna. The play did have the prospects to be a strong commentary on the present world situation but in spite of a very lavish presentation failed to get the viewers’ praise because of a very poor performance.

While discussing Raja a reference could be made of another production that handled a modified version of the play, done by the playwright himself. This particular play, Raja, which Tagore wrote in 1910, was the second drama in the genre that he had started in 1908 with Sarodatsab. This genre had a unique lyrical structure that was miles apart from what the viewers or, for that matter, the readers had experienced till then. Attempts had been made to stage these dramas but had more or less remained a rarity, sort of. Tagore had himself tried a number of times to stage these plays but felt that they were not as successful as they deserved to be. Perhaps this thought led him to write an abridged form of Raja which he thought would be easy to stage. He named this concise version Arupratan. In 1935 he staged it in Calcutta and himself acted in the roles of Thakurda and Raja. Bohurupi, under Shombhu Mitra, in the 50s and 60s of the last century had presented plays of this genre and they still remain as milestones in the Bengali stage history. 

Saptak, a group from Santiniketan, staged this play as a tribute to Tagore on his 150^th year. One should remember that not many performances of Arupratan are recorded as a high degree of creativity is needed to stage this play as the structure or form of the drama is far too weak than the content or substance of the play. Then there are a couple of characters in the drama whose manifestations on the stage requires a tall order that can rarely be seen. So, it is natural that the deep theatrical sense of the director and a strong acting potential, aptitude and competence are missing in a group which is not proficiently tuned to perform with a professional feel.  Nevertheless, the director Amartya Mukherjee deserves praise for an enterprising attempt to stage this play.

Dakghar is supposed to be the best drama of Tagore according to some pundits. They say that in this drama Tagore has included elements that give the piece the credentials of a true drama. This play was written in 1912 in the post-Geetanjali period. He did not have any songs in this play which happens to be the only exception in his works of that period. He proved to his critics that he could transcend his readers or viewers to his world of subjective realism without the support of music as it was thought in those days.  Some have classed it as allegorical while others call it symbolic, but what attracts the ordinary viewer to this play is the deep message it gives, that of existence in this world and beyond. The celebration of life is the foundation of all of Tagore’s philosophy and in this play that message is communicated to the viewers in a language which he calls lyrical prose.  The abstraction is so intense yet so placid that the ordinary viewer experiences the emotive power that the playwright had brought in the play. It would be interesting to go through a letter Tagore wrote to Monilal Gangopadhyay about the urge of emotions he felt that made him write Dakghar.  He writes that he felt that it was time for him to go and before that he would have to travel round the world to know the feelings of happiness and joy and all the uchhas (no fitting English word comes to mind, exuberance might fit in) of living that the people have all around. He said that one night when he was all engrossed in the work of his school, he felt that something was coming his way, may be death, and he had to go. And he speaks of expressing this sense of going ....this death...in his Dakghar. But he says he felt no sorrow or no pangs of bereavement and instead there was a peculiar joy that one feels at the time of separation or leave-taking.  These words of Tagore very well sum up the philosophy behind his creation of Dakghar.    

In their production entitled Journey to Dakghar Rabindranath Thakur, Kasba Argya tries to bring on the stage the different aspects of the drama itself. It is not the enactment of the play that is central to the production. The thrust of the play by Manish Mitra is more on an academic discourse about the drama that Tagore wrote. He relates the different experiences of people like Abanindranath Tagore who took active part in the stage decorations in the various staging of the play by Tagore himself, together with the eye-witness account of persons who were fortunate to see these shows like Rani Chanda. Then he very skilfully brings in the fact of the Polish doctor, Henryk Goldszmit, better known as Janusz Korczak, who made the Jewish children of a Warsaw ghetto to stage the Polish translation of The Post Office done by him, a week before their extermination in order to embolden them to face Death as it comes. Side by side Manish presents the play itself in parts keeping to the spirit of the original drama though in a complete different form. This production certainly opens a new trend in the field of Tagore plays.

            Swapnasandhani, a serious theatre group of Calcutta, staged Birpurus  which was declared very categorically in their publicity material that it was a play inspired by a Tagore’s poem of the same name. So there was no intention to outwit the viewers. Here, Kaushik Sen brings in Tagore’s Khoka but a different one who fights terrorism in order to save the ordinary folks. Very unambiguously the play narrates the predicament of the ordinary people of Jungalmahal who are subjected to tortures both from the so-called ultra left revolutionaries and also from the joint action force. The play portrays Khoka of Tagore’s Birpurus as a symbol of resistance against all kinds of atrocities and violence, and the play ends on an optimistic note. Poems of Subhas Mukherjee, Nirendranath Chakraborty, Sankha Ghosh have been used fittingly and this enriches the production, no doubt. But what is important is that a play has taken birth from a poem of Tagore, and this is a new path worth pursuing by other groups.