BRATYAJON’S INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

BRATYAJON’S INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

Bratyajon organised their second theatre festival terming it Bratyajon International Theatre Festival 2013. They justified their claim by roping in three groups from abroad. Last year they had brought in a group from Bangladesh. This year apart from that country one team from Nepal and another from Italy were invited. Then there were groups from Assam, Kerala, Maharashtra and Manipur together with one from North 24 Parganas and two from Kolkata one of which was Bratyajon themselves.  A total of eleven plays were staged in the seven-day festival held at the Star Theatre of which I saw six. The festival was dedicated to the great actress Binodini Dasi on her sesquicentennial birth celebration. It was a very aptly deserved homage to a magnificent personality of the stage, indeed.

The one production that stood out amongst all that were presented in the festival and one that would remain for long in the minds of those who were fortunate to see it was the inaugural presentation, Imphal’s Chorus Repertory Theatre’s ASHIBAGEE ESHEI, a play created de novo from Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken by one of the few geniuses of the modern Indian stage, Ratan Thiyam in 2008.  Ibsen’s theme and not his form was what Ratan had taken his inspiration. According to him, “….this piece of work concentrates only on the thematic content. It does not follow the concept of either realistic plot or normal structure. The performance is designed to express the internal entanglement of characters without distorting the original idea in a different plane with selected dialogues without a change from the original text. In this piece of my work, I just wanted to feel a different Ibsen with imagery, fantasy and ecstasy which he had created in this play; far away from realistic conventional mould where the performance becomes more subtle, symbolic, suggestive and stylized according to the demand of the content. It was not easy for me to prepare a performance text for this. ” Yes, this was a very difficult task and Ratan excelled. It was simply a magnificent magic, as though, was being performed on the stage. Meitei language was no bar for the viewers to be struck in awe. The designing of the play with each of the departments like dress, make-up, lights, ambient music, and stage was perfectly executed. Apart from these it was the utilization of space on the stage that a student of theatrics should have gained a lot if they had chanced to witness the presentation. ‘Thematic lighting’ was interpreted on the stage and it was a fresh experience for the Kolkata viewers.  

It was my first experience to see a Nepalese production, and I was impressed. Majipa Lakhe, presented by Shilpi Theatre from Kathmandu is a mythical play based on a Newari folk character that in the myths happens to be a demon. Every year a festival in the form of Indrajatra is held in the streets of Kathmandu to celebrate this demon as he is believed to help people in distress. The play has been presented in the form of a street show and the director Yubaraj Ghimire used a number of dramatic elements that help the viewers to grasp the happenings on the stage as the language of the play is foreign. And the viewers enjoyed the presentation. Music played an important part and Nepali folk with modern Western brought out the perfect effect.

The group from Naples, Italy – Teatro Stabile di Napoli – received the maximum of fan-fare and coverage in the press as the director Cristina Donadio is a familiar name in Italian cinema. Her troupe produced I CLYTEMNESTRA – THE VERDICT (lo, Clitemnestra - il verdetto), written by Valeria Parrella, a very talented young playwright of Italy. Based on Agamemnon one of the tragedies written by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus in one of his trilogies, The Oresteia,.  She has transported Agamemnon and Clytemnestra to modern day Naples and portrays Agamemnon as a Mafia boss. But whatever, nothing was intelligible from what was presented on the stage for the Kolkata viewers except for those few who knew Italian. A totally verbose drama with almost no other theatrical skills was, in fact, a very big disappointment for the audience. Language is, of course, a very important element but not the most if one creates a form that is able to convey to a foreign viewer what the play wants to tell.  This Italian production failed totally to communicate with the viewers. The only gain was to see Cristina act on the stage as she is that famous actor who worked with Fellini in one of his films and also had walked out of the film as she (she was in her teens, then) did not like to sit through the shooting and listen to the man’s directions.

Theatre Platform from North 24 Parganas presented two short plays – SOMOYJAN and KHAJANA AAMI AAR AASBO NA, both written by Bratya Basu. The first one tells a story of a young man on a tour of the past with his girl-friend in a time-machine. And in the process they get to know the hidden and sacrilegious past of their parents. The play had very little theatrical elements and a very inapt and unimaginative handling by the director Debashis Roy made the production a very mediocre one. The second production, though a forty minute one, was engrossing more because the playwright had introduced a number of psychological twists that made the viewers to get themselves involved in the situation presented on the stage. This once again demonstrates the powerful dramatist in Bratya. The story centres round an author and her reader whom she involves in building up her latest story. The actors did their parts justice. Debashis did his directorial job earnestly following the playwright and so was successful in this production.

Ramajit Kaur and her The Creative Arts presented an all-woman production BAAWRE MANN KE SAPNE as the concluding presentation of the Festival.  According to the brochure this group from Kolkata focuses on ‘Theatre as Therapy’ with the actors building up their characters from their personal experiences. Ramanjit had associated the characters in a story-line with whose help they interact with one another and thus express their angst, distress, jealousy, secrets and such other states of mind. But what strikes the viewers is the way she had used the theatrical elements like lights, music, stage, dress and such other to build up the play on the stage. The play ended with the cast distributing laddus that were a part of the props to the viewers. This viewer presented the laddu he had received to the director for a commendable job.

The last day also saw one of the most popular stage actors of the present times, Debsankar Halder speaking on acting as the Bisnu Basu Memorial Lecture. Those who missed the lecture did miss a very important speech that came extempore from within the thinking actor.

Before signing off, a word about Star Theatre – it is absolutely not fit for theatre viewing. It is a typical cinema hall with high back rest and reclining seats. One has to strain especially in the front rows to view the happenings on the stage. It is sad that a heritage theatre hall that had been restored and renovated has not been made compatible with theatre viewing. In the inaugural speech the Convenor of the Festival Bratya Basu who also happens to be the State Education minister appealed to the Mayor of Kolkata to name the theatre after Binodini Dasi. This proposal everyone present was happy to support. In this connection another piece of information would be quite inspiring for all theatre lovers. Cristina Donadio announced to undertake a project to film the life and times of Notee Binodini Dasi. The society and her male consorts deprived her from everything a successful person desires and even had maligned her for her social background but never having paused or falter to take every possible advantage from her. Bratyajon should be given its due share of indebtedness, too, for having focusing this great thespian to the world at large. 

BHAMKIRTAN: A satire by Chandan Sen

BHAMKIRTAN: A satire by Chandan Sen

Chandan Sen, one of the playwrights whose plays were important ingredients of the theatre-cuisines on which survived the theatre-hungry people like us in the late ‘60s and early 70’s still remains one of the most important dramatists of our times. When in those days almost every group was trying out apt as well as inapt adaptations/translations of works of dramatists from different lands like those of Brecht, Pirandello, Chekov, Moliere, and even Greek tragedians, a few groups tried to survive on desi fares. HaJaBaRaLa survived fifty three years in this fashion and this is a feat by itself as it is a group coming from the mofussils. This group with Chandan Sen as the nucleus did never suffer from a want of a play for production. They staged Sen’s recent satire, BHAMKIRTAN being their fifty fourth production. Strangely, to a query Sen could not recall the total number of plays he had penned. And that is what one calls prolificacy! 

Sen like in his most other works has put in powerful dramatic elements to capture the imagination of the general viewer as well as very strong retorts to questions on social problems that would give the viewers food for thought. The play highlights the epidemics that plague our society today – denying one's roots and fishing in troubled waters, as the saying goes. He has used two very attractive forms in this latest comedy of his. He has used rhyming dialogues that the viewers enjoy a lot. One also finds a very intelligent use of the folk format in the dramatic form.

As for the production the first and the foremost credit should go to the musical ambience created by Subhadip Guha. Dulal Santra’s make-up needs a special mention. Ranajit Chakraborty’s stage and Manoj Prasad’s lights did not have any pretension so viewing the happenings on the stage was comfortable. 

It was interesting to observe the creative conflicts between the dramatist Chandan Sen and the director Chandan Sen. The production had both the parts of him strongly present. So in the first half while some editing was required it was felt, the last climactic part could have been elaborated to some extent in order to highlight or rather focus on the bottom-line of the matter. 

Sayak’s DHRUBATARA & Meghnad

Sayak’s  DHRUBATARA & Meghnad

[Have been busy with writings on two very different subjects, so have not been able to post my blogs since more than a month. But have been seeing a number of theatres from different parts of the world as well as Bengali ones. Today I share with you one such from Sayak]

The senior thespian Meghnad Bhattacharya is certainly one of the very few present day leading stage actors to whom the younger generation of stage actors look up to for a guidance to interpret a character on the stage. The Bengali theatre owes a lot to this great actor-director. He once again proved himself in Sayak’s latest production, DHRUBATARA. Here he plays an intellectual who tries to balance between two worlds of his making.

In one of his classes the great thespian Natyacharya Sambhu Mitra while speaking on silent acting had pointed out that when the actor has no dialogues to utter for a long time and others are doing all the talking, he has to remain silent throughout but he must do something in order to attract the viewer’s   attention or rather compel the viewer to acknowledge his presence on the stage. As an illustration he mentioned about a very common scene in the zoo – that of a slumbering tiger in the cage on a hot afternoon. The rise and fall of the tiger’s stomach was enough to show-off its strength, it did not need to roar. This was beautifully demonstrated by Meghnad in the play.

Ujjwal Chattopadhyay’s play has all the ingredients of an engrossing drama where very mundane issues as well as very exceptional psychological issues that transgress the line of morality are dealt with in a somewhat melodramatic structure. There are many characters in the play and all of them contributed to the building up of the play. But what stands out in the production is that each of the characters was handled with care by the director so as to give the play homogeneity and a perfect balance. The two young talents that the Bengal stage would remember for long for their performance in PINKI BULI – Bhaswati Chakraborty and Rimi Saha did commendable jobs in this production, too, with the former taking a greater load.

Sayak believes, it seems, that viewers should get their money’s return and so they talk straight and never pretend to go through an intellectual exercise that remains incomprehensible for the general viewers.