The SAYAK Festival &
Kaushik Chattopadyay’s BAISHE AUGUST
This year’s
prize money that SAYAK had arranged was ‘substantial’ as Shri Rudraprasad
Sengupta defined it in his speech at the Prize-giving ceremony held at AFA. The
other personality giving out the awards was Shri Ashok Mukhopadhyay. The other
three members of the pannel of judges were Shri Bibhas Chakraborty, Shri
Soumitra Basu and Shri Debashis Majumdar, who was also the Selector of the ten
plays from amongst 121 entries.
The
selected 10 plays were Bhanu Sundarir Pala of Chakdah Natyajan, Baishe
August of Belgharia Abhimukh, Chhoto Galpo of Hatibagan Sangharam, Raat
Kato Holo of Bandel Aarohi, Neel Ronger Ghora of Krishti Ranchi, Palok of
Ballygunge Bratyajan, Pet e-Case of Nandipat, Shatabdir Swapno of
Uttarfalguni Agartala, Chop Adalat Cholchhe of Sanglap Kolkata, and Ashrunadi
of Karimpur Natyapremi.
The
awardees were
Best Production – Baishe August of Belgharia Abhimukh
2nd Best Production – Chhoto Galpo of Hatibagan
Sangharam
3rd Best Production – Bhanu Sundarir Pala of Chakdah
Natyajan
Best Director – Kaushil Chattopadyay for Baishe August
Best Playwright – Arindam Mukherjee for Chhoto Galpo
Best Actor – Amit Saha in Chhoto Galpo
Best Actress – Piyali Basu Chatterjee in Palok
Best Backstage Atriste – Ujan Chattopadhyay (music) for Baishe August
--------------------------------******************--------------------------
Kaushik Chattopadyay’s BAISHE AUGUST
It would be a pleasure to discuss the work that got the Best Production,
Best Director and the Best Backstage Artiste (music) awards. It may seem a bit queer to
see the name of the playwright-director of the play in my title instead of the
group that produced the play. Without curtailing an iota of credit from the
group it has become imperative to mention Kaushik Chattopadyay’s name, as the
work is indeed a result of a deep passion of the playwright-maker for the
content of the play; and who could transmit that emotional attachment to every
member of the troupe as also amongst the viewers.
Incidentally I have had the opportunity of seeing this drama way back in
2021. And that experience still ‘haunts’ me as it was agonising for the
spectators to withstand the deep emotional pain as the play culminates to its
known but deeply moving finish. The conclusion of the play is made known to the
uninitiated viewer at the very beginning itself, thus it makes it more
difficult to travel the path as if, to the specific culmination at the
appointed time. The mental stress that one experiences certainly makes it
difficult to follow the last couple of scenes. May be this is due to some sort
of shortcomings on my part as a viewer. It should also be noted that the
perception-cognition system that works in the viewer, has certainly a limited
carrying capacity.
Now let us start our discussion of the play and its staging.
The 1953 novel of the American novelist Howard Melvine Fast, ‘The Passion
of Sacco and Vanzetti’, from which Kaushik Chattopadhyay has penned this play, is
based on the true story of two Italian immigrants who were falsely convicted of
robbery and murder and were electrocuted to death in 1927 after seven years of
trials that has been termed as a mockery of justice in the pages of history. Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti who belonged to an Italian anarchist organization
and were stamped as radical communists were victims of anti-immigrant,
anti-anarchist and anti-communist prejudiced political and judicial system.
There had been a flooding of protests worldwide since the trial began. As a
reaction to this the Lithuanian-born artist Ben Shahn who was one of the
members of the Social Realist movement did a series of paintings in 1931-32
which he titled ‘The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti’.
Though an ardent Leftist the title of Shahn’s series had an association
with the Passion of Jesus and Shahn had shown the Christian last rights in one
of his paintings of the series, where the bodies of Sacco and Vanzetti are seen
in coffins with mourning ladies purported to be the wife of Sacco and the
sister of Vanzetti. Fast had kept this title for his book where he describes
the last eighteen hours of the two convicts through which he tells the story of
the last seven years of their sufferings and the denying of justice and truth.
And through the story he poses some eternal questions in front of the power
that rules.
Chattopadhyay had adapted the novel and named his play Baishe August.
He questions the ruler but what I would
call in a modest non-militant tone through the different incidents seen today that
are equally distressing and smacks of anti-semitsm in a different garb, be it
the anti-CAA protest, or the saffron terror in Jamia Milia Islamia, or the
Shaheen Bagh incident or may be the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. He
has added five characters in his adaptation. Two of them are two commentators
through whom he brings today’s issues in the foreground. Two clowns and a
time-keeper are three very important elements that Chattopadhyay had executed
to give his idiom a strong voice. But what sets this play apart is the amount
of passion that Chattopadhyay had poured into its making. And this gets
transmitted so quickly amongst us, the spectators. This ‘passion’ is not the
emotional feeling. Chattopadhyay wants the viewers to feel the ‘pain’ that
Sacco and Vanzetti had suffered for the seven long years. The mental pressure
is too much to withstand for an intense viewer of the play.
Apart from Hiran Mitra’s stage designing or the low-key, realistic lights
by Dipankar De, or the choice of colour grey in the designing of the dresses,
excepting the colourful clowns, by Mom Bhattacharya, which made the total mise-en-scene
work wonders, Ujan Chattopadhyay’s music was stunningly a revelation for the
spectators. This is because Ujan had shown how the score can heighten the
dramatic moments yet keep its own soul in its place. His use of Italiano melodic pieces with his own gave the run of the play its own tune and rhythm. Incidentally, Ujan is the son of Kaushik.
Jyotirmay Chatterjee’s in depth research on the subject derives kudos.
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