Ganakrishti’s Taar Pratikshaye and Godot: Waiting for ‘Nothingness’

 

Ganakrishti’s Taar Pratikshaye and Godot: Waiting for ‘Nothingness’

When the present trend in theatre production is to present a visually rich stage show, it is quite amazing to find Ganakrishti presenting a play bereft of any visual splendour and having little box-office value, or perhaps it would be prudent to say, a play with no entertainment value at all. On the occasion of their 42^nd anniversary, Ganakrishti presented a very well-done adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as Taar Pratikshaye. One wonders why in these difficult times when the theatre world has taken the worst battering, a group would dare to produce a play that is considered as one of the most difficult plays in the absurd genre.  

The answer to my perplexity lies there-in. The time we are going through is perhaps one of the worst since man’s history. Yes, Covid is a cause, and may have turned out to be the main cause since the beginning of this year. But the world, especially a few big nations like ours, has been enduring a rightist, and a repressive and a fascist-like political and economic crisis since quite a number of years. And conditions have depreciated markedly to a point of crackdown where the quality of life has reached an ebb, and the only parameter of living out a life for the common man has become the degree of ‘depression’ one experiences. think of Gogo and Didi. And thus, the resultant situation is like living with ‘nothingness’. And that is what Taar Pratikshaye tries to reiterate. And that is where Ganakrishti walks the extra mile.

Before going into the discussion on the relevance of the play in today’s situation, let us review Ganakrishti’s staging of the play. The production is worth remembering for a number of reasons, four to be precise. Firstly, Amitava Dutta’s reworking of the English script of Beckett into the Bengali lingo overcomes the great challenge of transcreating the nonsensical dialogues. The Anglican and Biblical references, of course, did pose a dilemma for Dutta. The second reason is his mounting of the play, that surely warrants accolades. He was particularly very careful in keeping the audiences’ attention in what can be called the ‘non-happenings’ on the stage in conjunction to creating the pestilent monotony and repetitiveness that is characteristic of absurdism. Then thirdly, the actors – Swarnendu Sen as Agaa (Gogo), Sukanta Shil as Bagaa (Didi), Dipak Das as Podu (Pozzo) and, of course, Raju Das as Lakka (Lucky) who astounded the viewers with the excellently rendered long tirade that was also excellently penned by Dutta – all showed astonishing ingenuity in portraying the characters. Lastly, a special word of applause is due to Gautam Ghosh for his very subtle yet very profound background score that could bring out the sense of uncertainty and that of voidness that define the play. 

But what relevance has this play in today’s situation? We can say, the play teaches us to wait for ‘nothing’. And that is the truth of existential absurdism which seems to be the secret of living a purposeful life in this world ruled by ‘dangerous minds’, to borrow a phrase from the title of a book by Roger Williams and Robin Munro.

As Rebecca Camilleri in her 2015 dissertation paper entitled ‘Waiting for Nothing: The experience of the live event in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and Marina Abramovic’s performance The Artist is Present’, calls the play a philosophical dialect, we find that Beckett’s minimal use of objects (he uses just a tree on the stage) and the use of space and time have least rationality. They ‘create a sense of waiting which seeks to unite performer and spectator in a sensory experience’. But this experience is dependent on the interpretative stance of the spectator, according to Camilleri.

We find Agaa (Gogo) and Bagaa (Didi) failing to find a meaningful relationship with their surrounding and also between themselves. They are constantly conversing but they communicate nothing. The viewers join them to experience their waiting – waiting for someone or for that matter, waiting for something. Two more characters Podu (Pozzo) and Lakka (Lucky) are introduced to compound the contemplation process. But the question that the four characters, as well as the viewers seek is ‘who is Godot?’

Godot is not a character and the name signifies nothing. Godot is a concept that makes us question the meaning of our existence. The non-existent concept is a revelation of the absurdity of the time and the prevailing situation. It, however, keeps us – the Agaas (Gogos) and the Bagaas (Didis) on tenterhooks, waiting for the WORSE to come. Of course, one can argue and say, be optimistic and expect BETTER to come and not the WORSE. But judging from the present situation that is represented by the two impoverished, both economically and intellectually, characters of Agaa (Gogo) and Bagaa (Didi), and the way Godot keeps them waiting eternally, one can never expect anything better than the WORSE to come. And to add to this is the character of Podu (Pozzo) who represent the exploiting class and that of his lackey Lakka (Lucky) who represent the oppressed, a true representation of today’s society is complete.

Thus, Ganakrishti with their latest production Taar Pratikshaye has done a tremendous job of waking us up from the stupor and make us ready to face the WORSE and expect NOTHING. And that would keep us moving on to achieve the BETTER. Remember Gogo and Didi at the end, did not make their exits in spite of deciding to leave.

‘Father’ in Bergman’s films and Strindberg’s ‘The Father’: a cursory survey

‘Father’ in Bergman’s films and Strindberg’s ‘The Father’: a cursory survey

Ingmar Bergman is said to have been accompanied by August Strindberg throughout his theatre career. Strindberg had also impressed, partly, upon Bergman’s philosophical outlook especially in his post-Inferno crisis period. His different films have many indications of this fact and amongst these is his handling of the character of the Father, which have recurred in his films in different overtones. It is a fact that his personal life did have a great implication in his approach to this character. And thus, some of his important films get an autobiographical touch. His own father was the Lutheran chaplain to the Swedish royal family, and he had forced the little Bergman into religion. We find that, he relates this fact through the pastor in his Winter Light who tells his mistress how he was forced by his father to become a preacher. Bergman, from his relations with different wives and mistresses, had fathered eight children, including a daughter who came to know about him being her father twenty-two years after she was born. We find the familial relationships, especially of the father with his offspring are the pivotal points in a number of his more significant films.  

On the other hand, Strindberg, whose autobiographical novel is named The Son of a Servant was a son of a serving-maid who followed Pietism, which is a part of Lutheranism. This had made him religious minded from his early childhood. But his childhood had witnessed religious fanaticism, too, apart from poverty and ‘emotional insecurity’. One wonders how similar had been the childhood upbringings of both the guru and the shishya. Though Strindberg’s recurrent theme had been to probe the husband and wife relationship, his portrayal of the father as a familial character in his The Father, finds an exceptional treatment. He portrays a couple who, in spite of a congenial relationship otherwise, constantly disagrees on their daughter’s future. The mother wants her to be home-educated and thus get to know the ideal Christian values. This is opposed by the father who is a freethinker and an intellectual. He has no qualms of his daughter exposed to atheism or, for that matter, any other faith. The wife in a desperate attempt to stop this patriarchal system, unscrupulously plan to drive her husband mad. She insinuates that he is not the girl’s father. A very intense psychological battle is designed by the playwright making the play a combination of psychology and Naturalism.

Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that, a very well adaptation of this play by Strindberg was staged by Ushneek, last year. Ishita Mukherjee, the director and playwright of the play entitled Babai, added a typical Bengali texture to the familial set-up, in addition to the distribution of space on the stage for the husband, wife and their daughter to depict their individual space in the conflict. Debshankar Haldar portraying the father, is an actor who knows the art of dissecting out a character to reveal its soul to the audience.   

Returning back to our discourse, it should be mentioned that Bergman was himself a bit too sensitive about the father’s portrayal on the stage. He writes to the Swedish novelist Axel Lundegard, who was asked to translate The Father into Danish, ‘… I suggest that the Captain’s role be given to an actor with an otherwise vigorous temperament who meets his fate in fairly good spirits, with the self-ironic, slightly skeptical tone of a man of the world. He is aware of his superiority but dies wrapping himself in those spider webs he cannot tear to pieces because of the law of nature.’ In a correspondence with the theatre director Harold Molander, Strindberg writes, ‘The plot is no crazier than Iago’s soul murder of Othello, and the question of paternity is here treated only a little more seriously than in The Maternity Room (the reference of which I am yet to come across, though the idea is well established), where it is depicted with the usual classical crudity.’    

The Father, elaborates on the ‘problem play’ tenets of Ibsen, especially on the moral dilemmas of the characters, but it moves further from Ibsen’s Naturalism to a ‘greater Naturalism’. This also is evident in the treatment of the central characters of Bergman’s Trilogy of Faith films. Strindberg believed that in The Father he had found a new style of writing which he termed ‘artistic-psychological’. We can also might term Bergman’s cinema-making ‘artistic-psychological’ as well. Strindberg used heavy dose of emotional elements in his building up of the events, which, in turn, shaped the characters and gave their specific tone and texture, and that is even reflected in their reciprocal dialogues. This is equally evident in Bergman’s play of the plots and the characters.

The psychological elements in Bergman’s films is the mainstay of his works. The themes that Bergman chose were certainly not very pleasant for joy-reading. They were sordid and some of them were once taboo to even mention in societal gatherings. The themes in Bergman’s films ranged from love and its negation, faith and the loss of it, marital relations that questions the very institution of marriage, inter-familial relationships, incest relationship, emotional isolations, or the irrationality of moral choice, or pointing at the absurdity of existence, questioning the father figure which also included, of course, beliefs, disbeliefs and doubts about God, and so on.   

Bergman had defined the three films of his Trilogy of Faith as films dealing with ‘reduction’. He used this term metaphysically to address the fundamental nature of reality. By this term he denoted a total replacement of the concept of God. The concept of the real presence of God (and the father) is reduced gradually in the three films. According to him, in Through a Glass Darkly certainty is achieved, that is, the schizophrenic daughter of the escapist non-communicative father has no doubts that God appears as a monstrous spider and the father has no communication with his children. In Winter Light certainty is exposed, that is the pastor himself expresses his doubts about God. In The Silence, by which he meant God’s silence, it is the negative impression, where a mother and an aunt are present while there is no father.

It is interesting to note that, in the film The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky the central character called Alexander bargains with God. Incidentally, Tarkovsky was a follower of Bergman (and also of Akira Kurosawa), and the making of the film is so very Bergman-like (with the Kurosawa-like slow camera movements).

As I had mentioned in my earlier blog that mysticism and different metaphors used by the playwright have found their places in Bergman’s films. The power of observing supernatural phenomena and clairvoyance, are abundant in his films.

Bergman’s handling of God, religion, faith etc., was a natural outcome of his personal growing up. On the other hand, we find Strindberg writing to Georg Brandes, the Danish literary critic who had appreciated The Father, ‘I regard Christianity as a regression, [-] because it is contrary to our evolution, which seeks to protect the strong against the weak, and the current pressure from women seems to me a symptom of the regression of the race and a consequence of Christianity.’      

But twenty years later in 1908 it is strange to find Strindberg writing to Uno Stadius, a supporter of temperance, ‘I am a Christian and am convinced that people should not be raised with theatre and paintings but with work and the fear of God. Instead of the surrogate of art, they possess the original, God’s wonderful natural world! [-]’

I believe here in comes the element of mysticism and dreams.  And that leads us from the Father or the God to the world of dreams and fantasies.

Bergman’s handling of the dreams is akin to those of Strindberg’s. Strindberg wrote to Axel Lundegard, ‘It is as if I’m walking in my sleep; as if my life and writing have gotten all jumbled up. I don’t know if The Father is fiction or if my life has been, but I feel as if [-] this at some moment soon will dawn upon me, and then I shall collapse either into madness and remorse or suicide. Through much writing my life has become a shadow life. I no longer feel as if I am walking the earth but floating weightless in an atmosphere not of air but darkness. If light enters into darkness, I shall collapse and be crushed!

‘The strange thing is that in an often-recurring nocturnal dream I feel I am flying weightless which I find quite natural, as though all notions of right and wrong, true and false, have dissolved and everything that happens, however strange, appears just as it should. [-]’ 

The dreams in Bergman’s films, so to say, are his revisits into his inner self. But a very different treatment is seen in Wild Strawberries, where the dream (nightmare) sequence is a masterpiece of surrealism in cinema. Interestingly, Tarkovsky’s films, too, have such dreams of floating weightless. 

Bergman had once said that he would want to keep the dreams in his mind and later make a film on it. He frequently mixed the elements of his unconscious with art – dreams and cinema. Innumerable images are encountered in his films which are dream-like. Existential fears of sexual anxieties are explicitly portrayed. He cited Strindberg’s A Dream Play as his inspiration. But The Ghost Sonata which Strindberg wrote in 1907 has had a particular fascination for Bergman who produced this chamber play four times in his entire theatre career – 1941, 1954, 1973 and 2000. The questions of paternity, betrayal, morality, spirituality are put up in this early modernist drama. Seeing the film made by Bergman himself on the latest version of his stage production is an exceptional experience. Strindberg had defined the play as ‘a piece of fantasy’. This version is seen as a ‘depressing existentialist Strindberg compendium; a Judgement Day drama.’ Bergman had said that, he had stressed the fact that, ‘the only thing that can give man any kind of salvation – a secular one – is the grace and compassion which come out of himself’. And that is the summit where Bergman meets his ‘Father’ Strindberg.

SOUMITRA CHATTERJEE : A Character Analyst par excellence

 

SOUMITRA CHATTERJEE :

A Character Analyst par excellence

                              

As soon as the name of Soumitra Chatterjee is mentioned the image that appears in one’s mind is that of a smashingly handsome matinee idol of the big screen who had collaborated with Satyajit Ray in the latter’s 14 films. But as a passionate enthusiast of the art of acting, Soumitra Chatterjee appears in two avatars – one that of stage actor Soumitra and the other that of the film actor Soumitra. I have purposefully mentioned stage actor Soumitra ahead of the silver screen actor Soumitra. I believe, and certainly I do, that, stage actor Soumitra was far ahead of the silver screen actor Soumitra. For professional reasons, of course, he did prioritise his career in films. The medium of cinema has, of course, given him recognition, international fame, and a huge following at home. I consider seeing him act on the stage even once was a far enriching experience than seeing a number of his films. And this includes his films that he did for Satyajit Ray. I believe that, the viewer never gets to see the complete actor in him in the films he acted in, which perhaps number more than 200 including the Ray-ones, than he had the privilege to discover in a work of his on the stage.

Let me elucidate this point that I am trying to establish with an example. In 2012, Soumitra had staged a play Chhariganga (ref. theatrebengal.blogspot.com 26.4.2012) where he played the role of a scientist-philosopher. I had done a review article on this production for Desh. It was in the form of a letter that I had addressed to the thespian. I wrote that after seeing him act in numerous films, I, as an ardent theatre-lover, had felt that at the root of his artistic soul there was an out-and-out stage actor. I wrote that, for decades he had been contributing to the Bengali stage with a treasure trove of priceless gems of acting, theatre-making, and of course, play-writing, the values of which we are yet to be discerned, appreciated and admired. I confessed that we had failed to reckon with his total activities in the theatre world. And I added that, it is unfortunate that, we still go to the theatre to see ‘Soumitra’ and not his work.

Then, I recalled in my article that, way back in 1981, in a conversation with me, he had said that, acting is an affair of a couple of hours and an actor – a real good one – is ready, and is qualified to ‘reasonably’ interpret the human character of the play, or for that matter, the story. Then he had said that, he studies the character he would be portraying and deeply ponders on it. And then, he had remarked that, like the bistaar in a khayal rendition he gradually unfolds the character on the stage. This was a clear indication, I observed in my writing, that, at the central point of his thinking process there resides a stage-actor.

After discussing all other aspects of that particular production, I had written that, I had restrained from commenting on his performance – his rendition of dialogues, his intonations, his movements on the stage, his activities with his hands, his various looks, glances and gazes. They were all so very different from what we are used to see on the stage, usually. So, I admitted that, I was at a loss to describe or comment on his performance. I had then tried to explain with the instance that he had given of the presentation of khayal. I wrote that, in the bistaar of the aalap part of the rendition, the singer introduces the various notes of the raga to the listeners. The singer, I wrote, in his or her very own way establishes the notes and ventures into the virgin areas, and in that journey his or her fellow travellers are those listeners present at that very point of time. That is exactly, I pointed out, how he develops the character on the stage, as like the improvisations of the singer. With all his perceptions, cognitions and reasonings he turns the character into a person of flesh and blood. And the witnesses to such an act of magical transformation are not only the viewers on that particular day, but also the co-actors present on the stage with him.

When Soumitra used to construct those enchanted moments with his co-actors, the spectators could perceive the deep sense of involvement he had in the various activities of his fellow actors, too. And this resulted in an unbelievable truth being born in front of the spectators. This spontaneity is never possible in a film. As he had acting in his veins – in his organic make-up – he, may perhaps, did get to give this extra bit in a composite shot on the studio floor. But the viewers of his films seldom could observe such glimpses of his expressions either in the follow-through of his own deliveries or those of his co-actors. This is because in the making process of a film it is customary that, the director would add reaction shots to it and complete the particular sequence.

We see such instances in Ray films, too. Let us take an instance from Soumitra’s first film, Apur Sansar. There is a sequence when Apu rushes down the stairs to fetch a maid for Aparna, and the latter calls him back. Apu quite dejected on his financial incompetence to provide a helping hand for his newly wed, walks back into the room and sits on the bed, flinging the flute, crossing his legs and looking the other side. His reaction continuity is captured by Ray with a reaction close up of Aparna’s cute yet sly smile and Apu’s annoyed expression. But the viewers miss the reaction of Soumitra’s Apu, a few frames of which remain at the cutting point of the first part. If this particular sequence were to have been presented on the stage, the spectator would have had the experience of perceiving the totality of the reaction of the actor Soumitra. It is interesting to note, though coincidental, that the camera angle of the shot is akin to the spatial relation of the stage and the spectator.

But then how has he been so successful as a screen actor? Apart from his attractive looks, his radiance, his aura (which, by the way, had once been the prerequisites for an actor to upgrade oneself to the image of a matinee idol), he applied the same process of interpreting a character and working it out, even for the segmental shots, as he would for the stage with the help of his own intellectual perception. His fathomless talent, perhaps, helped him to do so, on the shooting floor, and that too, in a very short time. And therein lies the secret of a complete stage actor. The deeply imprinted philosophy of stage acting helped him to apply that lesson very successfully to screen acting, keeping all the conditions of the film medium unaltered. He made use of the camera and its lenses with such brilliance that one wonders why did he not make a film of his own.

It is often said that acting or rather the expressions should remain a bit subdued in films as because the camera amplifies them on the big screen. Does it imply that in order to make the last row see and hear what is being done on the stage, stage acting has to be high strung? If one had seen Soumitra on the stage one would perceive how restrained, and how natural he was in his expressions. In this respect, in one of his articles on Sisirkumar Bhaduri he gave the example of the latter’s rendition of Jibananda in the play Soroshi. Soumitra wrote that, Bhaduri never showed any heroic outbursts, that was very common even in the present days. Bhaduri’s acting, according to Soumitra, was so reclusive and suggestive, that it was rare to witness even in the modern times. We know that Bhaduri’s genre was successfully carried forward by his ardent follower Soumitra. It would be prudent to give another example to justify my above statement. Those who have had the privilege in seeing Soumitra’s acting as an over-drunk in Nilkantha knows what I am hinting at. One is astounded to find Soumitra’s analysis of Sisirkumar’s acting as Jogesh in comparison to that of Nimchand, both being a drunkard’s part. It becomes obvious why Soumitra was so great as a stage actor.

He has done numerous characters in his whole life and for almost all of them he had tried to ‘reasonably’ interpret them with his own logic and by his own reasoning. He certainly enjoyed a greater freedom in working out the character on the stage than he was in the cinema for obvious reasons. In a different context he had told a film-fan of his that the actor was ‘helpless’ in regard to cinema acting which according to him was a ‘dependant art’. As because the actor reaches the viewer via the screenplay writer and the director and the cameraman and the editor, the viewer can never get him in his completeness. But on the stage the actor, especially a cerebral one, infuses the character he is playing with whatever is needed, judging all the reasons and logic, and present the character in flesh and blood. He gets the chance to instantly improvise in front of the spectators and, thereby, establishes a direct communication with them.

And if the cerebral actor happens to be a poet, an erudite scholar, and a man of letters, then these instantaneous creativeness on the stage becomes individual pieces of haiku. For one who has had the fortune to watch Soumitra perform on stage, these sparkling moments remain indelible in their memories. But have we had the chance to experience such scintillating moments in films? In cinema his brilliance is in his total characterisation of the person he has been assigned to portray. Or, in the other way round, it can be said that, it depends on how efficiently the director employs his brilliance on the screen. Naturally, here the reference of Satyajit Ray creeps in.

Writing about Uttam Kumar in an article in Sunday just after the latter’s death in 1980, Ray gave his initial impression about the heart-throb of the Bengali film-goers like this, ‘Uttam had good looks, a certain presence, an ease of manner, and no trace of the theatre in his performance’. His impressions of working with him was very striking. He noted, ‘I must say working with Uttam turned out to be one of the most pleasant experiences of my film-making career. I found out early on that he belonged to the breed of instinctive actors. I have worked with the other kind too, the cerebral one, the one that likes to take a part to pieces and probe into background, motivations, etc., in order to ‘get beneath the skin of the character’. But the fact is, that there is no guarantee that a cerebral actor will make a more substantial contribution than an instinctive one. I hardly recall any discussion with Uttam on a serious, analytical level on the character he was playing. And yet he constantly surprised and delighted me with the unexpected little details of action and behaviour which came from him and not from me, which were always in character and enhanced the scene. They were so spontaneous that it seemed he produced these out of his sleeve. If there was any cognition involved, he never spoke about it.’ He finished off his writing like this, ‘…Uttam’s work shows rare virtues of grace, spontaneity and confidence. Such combination is not easy to come by, and it is hard to see anyone taking his place in the cinema of West Bengal in the near future.’

Ray’s study of Uttam and his work needs circumspection. He says Uttam had ‘no trace of the theatre in his performance’. Uttam, in fact, did not have any theatre background. One who is familiar with Uttam’s earlier films would remember that, apart from his attractive smile and good-looks there was a particular stiffness in his movements and expressions, that smirked of a naïve actor. Of course, he matured with time. Ray termed him as an ‘instinctive actor’ who would present the character superficially and without getting ‘beneath the skin of the character’, and who would add ‘unexpected little details of action and behaviour’. The wetting of the fountain pen nib by dipping it in the glass of water to sign an autograph, (Nayak) was one such improvisation that even warranted Ray’s praise. But what about Soumitra, who in a span of thirty-two years had been Ray’s lead role in fourteen of his feature films? Didn’t he have the ‘rare virtues of grace, spontaneity and confidence’? Then why did Ray never mention Soumitra’s name in any of his articles in the English language that he wrote for the English-speaking world? Why did he keep mum, when he had mentioned names of Chunibala (‘Pather Panchali could never be made as Chunibala is no longer there.’), Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Chhabi Biswas (‘our greatest actor’), Tulsi Chakraborty, and even Shabana Azmi (‘one of our finest dramatic actresses’), or, for that matter, Suhasini Mulay and Dhritiman Chatterjee, whom he had placed in the ‘star’ creed. But Soumitra Chatterjee, incredibly though, remains absent in his discussions.

We do get an indirect reference in these words – ‘I have worked with the other kind too, the cerebral one, the one that likes to take a part to pieces and probe into background, motivations, etc., in order to ‘get beneath the skin of the character’. Surprisingly, he does not give extra credit to this cerebral actor. He says, ‘there is no guarantee that a cerebral actor will make a more substantial contribution than an instinctive one’.

Ray was comfortable, it seems, with those actors who were not been bitten by the theatre bug, that is, those who had no theatre training, and were less, or rather, not analytical in their handling of the characters. He could transform his meticulously written, programmed and chalked out screenplays into screen-images with these types of actors, who would carry out to the details, what he wanted. Did he give Soumitra that freedom to express his spontaneity, his confidence to interpret in his own way? This was quite obvious in his playing of Sandip in Ghare-Baire.

In a conversation with yours truly, Soumitra had once said that, he had failed to understand the character of Udayan Pandit (Hirak Rajar Deshe dir. Satyajit Ray). Was he a detective? Was he a terrorist? Was he a spy? Was he an athlete? Or, was he a patriotic intellectual? But on the other hand, he was very ambitious about the role of Khidda (Kony dir. Saroj Dey), which he thought he could do justice to. So, as an actor he had been looking for a space where he could keep himself in the shadow and bring the character in front of the footlights and introduce the soul of the character to the spectator.

For the method-acting process of Stanislavsky’s school of stage-acting, where the actor has to transform himself into the ‘fictional first person’ (The neuroscience of Romeo and Juliet: an fMRI study of acting., Steven Brown, et al. Royal Society Open Science, 2019), the actor has to probe into the emotional truth of the character. When in Homapakhi one becomes a witness to such an inquiry by a manic-depressive university professor, one discovers Soumitra Chatterjee as an analyst par excellence.