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.