SHESH MATHATA KATA PARHAR AAGE (transl: Before the last decapitation) of Chaturtha Matra

 

 

I would like to apologise at the beginning of this Blog for having missed to translate the title of Paramik’s play. The title of the play is ROOPANTAR, the translation of the name would be like ‘Transformation’ or ‘Metamorphosis’. Personally, I prefer ‘Transformation’.   

 

SHESH MATHATA KATA PARHAR AAGE (transl: Before the last decapitation) of Chaturtha Matra presented on 14 June 2026

 

Kaberi Basu and Santanu Bandopadhyay presented Chaturtha Matra’s latest production SHESH MATHATA KATA PARHAR AAGE, not at their usual site at Achira in Bolpur’s Phuldanga, but at a newly developed space in the house of the legendary thespian and playmaker Asit Mukhopadhyay at Monoharpukur in Kolkata. The daughters of the great theatre personality have developed his erstwhile 2^nd floor bedroom into an intimate space or a studio space and have named it Asit Mukhopadhyay Cultural Centre. Chaturtha Matra has planned to present performances and other theatre related events at AMCC twice every month.

As part of that programme, they performed this play based on a mini-story by Mojaffor Hossain of Bangladesh. Typical to their genre of theatre, this too is designed in an arrangement far from the conventional theatrical form. Since the last 8 to 9 years, Chaturtha Matra has been regularly practising their type of theatre on the 1^st and the 3^rd Saturdays of every month at Achira. If any of my readers are interested to know about their type of work, they can refer to my Blog of 19 October 2024 where I in discussing about their journal, Theare Journal had talked briefly about their kind of work.   

Mojaffor Hossain’s story is based on a surrealistic Polish puppet animation film, Danny Boy made by Marek Skrobeki in 2010. The fable like story goes like this. One morning a person gets up from his bed and finds everyone in and around, including the young and the old, the blind beggar, roadside salesmen, car drivers, the bank-robber, the street dogs - each and every one of them headless. They have all been decapitated. He finds the whole town in total chaos, and in a hellish disorganised state. He sees people bumping into others, cars colliding and trampling people and such countless deranged situations all around. He finds a helpless headless woman standing in the centre of the road. He brings some flowers to her and moves her aside. Rampant cases of rape, murder and barbarous cruelty make the place the Devil’s paradise. Even the personal world of a person does not remain personal anymore. He comes to understand that everything happening there is the handiwork of the authority in power. As the members of the population are all head-less there is thus no protest, no uproar, no howling, no screams of frightening terror. He seeks legal help, but there too, he finds law decapitated. At the end he too, has his head guillotined.              

Kaberi & Santanu do not care to entertain their viewers with lollipop contents. Instead force them to perceive the morbid conditions they are living in. The contents they choose have strong comments on the system as in this work. Mojaffor Hossain’s symbolic story is a wake-up call for the spectators to fight a totalitarian system that is looming overhead. Their genre is more akin to anti-theatricality. They used the room, the adjoining passage and the balcony, as is their style of mobile space. Four to five co-actors represent the decapitated people of the town by wrapping their heads in plastic sheets. Their physical acting warrants a round of applause. Especially the work of Subhamita Majumdar as a headless pedestrian repeatedly bumping into an obstacle and falling down, needs to be mentioned. The others were Monideepa Goswami and Biplab Gayen. Kaberi was one of them too. At the end she with her silent mime expressed loudly the predicament facing the general mass. A seasoned actor like her could have presented such a gripping moment. Choreographic dance movement in this section by Rupali needs to be appreciated. 

Ropes and transparent plastic packets strewn all around the floor representing the torn out visceral parts of the people is a very telling application of simple prop items. The projection of the original Strobecki film on the background wall and the overhead ceiling was so very distorted that viewing the performance in front was greatly hampered. Was this a deliberate act by Santanu? Who knows.  

 

The next play to be discussed would be LAGAN CHAND by Thealight staged on 20 June 2026