A Fresh Look at Pirandello: Sansriti’s Kothakar Charitra Kothaey Rekhechho

A Fresh Look at Pirandello: Sansriti’s Kothakar Charitra Kothaey Rekhechho

 

It has been six decades that the theatre goers of Calcutta had had the opportunity of experiencing a very new genre of play that googlyed them clean bowled. It was Nandikar’s 1961 production of Natyakarer Sandhaney Chha’ti Charitra, a play adapted by Rudraprasad Sengupta from Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play Six Characters in Search of an Author, and made by Ajitesh Bandopadhyay. In spite of being aware of the fact that the afore said sentence does not give the reader any new information, I feel elated to reiterate the dry facts just because it gives me a chance to pay my homage to the great playwright, to the man who adapted the play to a Bengali setting, and of course to the man who took the risk of staging such an unconventional play in such an experimental form and that too, for a new theatre group. I had been fortunate enough to have been an awe-struck viewer of the Nandikar creation in the later years of its production; but that is history.

Once again, I have had the occasion to be a witness of a very fresh and brilliant work of the same play entitled Kothakar Charitra Kothaey Rekhechho staged by Sansriti on their 31^st under the baton of Debesh Chatterjee at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Debesh has kept the version of Rudraprasad almost unaltered except for a few additions and adjustments for the sake of his presentation, and of course kept it unadulterated. This is a very significant point to be noted as it is common to find doctoring and morphing the original in the name of a face-lift. It is shocking to find even Tagore goes under the scalpel in an attempt to ‘give the play a modern perspective and look’! However in this case the viewer should thank Providence that Debesh had his senses in place.

It is pointless to discuss this iconic play of Pirandello. Every keen theatre enthusiast knows how this play creates a magic by intermingling the real world and the reality of the make belief world of theatre. The dramatist questions which of the two are real – the actor or the character he is playing? The question in other words could be that if realistic acting is a truth in itself then isn’t truth too an illusion? Pirandello was in fact in quest of the relativity of truth in the perspective of subjectivity. Truth can never be absolute. One may wonder perhaps that was the reason why Einstein after seeing the play told Pirandello, ‘We are soul-mates’.

One can go on babbling for hours about this play. But at the same time, it should also be acknowledged that it is one of the toughest jobs in world-theatre to stage it. Debesh has done it. He has amazingly blended realism with absurdism, as well as discerned objectivity from subjectivity with such deftness. This gives the uninitiated viewer a lesson in the way of life. He has done this in his process of building the play. In the making process, the play-maker has extracted out the deeper undertones that hid in between the lines of the written script by the dramatist. This only helps to bring the profound meanings, the suggestiveness, the hints and cues that Pirandello wanted to communicate into the perception of the viewers. The totality of the dramatic performance and the associated elements had to be flawless in order to do this. Debesh in his mounting could achieve this impact. He has been very watchful on both the physical as well as the verbal departments of acting of his players. He has also through his scenographic designing given substantial importance in working out the space on the stage, and its sharing between the players. A perfect mise-en-scene is very important in staging of such plays, and this production is a lesson for the students of play-making, no doubt.

He has kept spontaneity as well as extemporaneity in acting as they are integral to the realistic acting form. As the script requires the make-belief aspect of expression, he does it so dexterously that the viewer is confused to get hold of the situation happening in front of him. But Debesh’s handling of the realistic acting of the theatre group and that of the intruders is astonishing as there had to be a textural difference in the delivery of dialogues and gestural expressions of these two sets of actors. This could be possible due to his creative understanding of the characters. The concept that Pirandello puts forward that reality changes with time is a lesson by itself for the viewers and thereby they too become members of the troupe as if.

A very tight scripting has helped in maintaining the rhythm of the play which has been very well supported by Sudip Sanyal’s lights and Anindya Nandi’s music. Perfect execution of the director’s ideas was excellently done by each and every actor for whom their individual roles were more or less challenging. Ashim Roychoudhury’s father, or Monalisa Chatterjee’s step daughter excelled in their verbose acting. On the other hand, Tamali Choudhury’s mother or Korak Samanta’s son were as sensual in their succinct performances. Abhra Mukherjee or Shouvik Majumdar or Chandan Ghosh were immaculate in their portrayal as were the others.

Once again kudos to Sansriti for such a truthful presentation of Pirandello’s concept of Truth.           

Two short length plays by Kathakriti

 

Two short length plays by Kathakriti

Kathakriti staged two short length plays at Girish Mancha in February this year as their latest production. The first of these, Ekta Galpo Shunbe… (Will You Listen to a Story…) is adapted from Krishnachura, a poetical drama penned by Shyamal Ghosh. It was a pleasant experience for the viewers to watch the play very well crafted by Sanjib Roy. The script, too, was done by Sanjib. The storyline centres around a middle-aged man and a woman who loved each other during their college days suddenly chance to meet each other in front of New Market. They had once dated in a caffe, or at Outram Ghat, or in the Maidan under a Krishnachura tree. They decide to revisit those days at the same caffe, on the strands of the Hooghly River and under the same tree in the Maidan. the storyline has no dramatic twists nor any punches or any climactic points to make the viewers engrossed. But even so Sanjib’s building up of the play together with the subtle expressions of the emotions of the two characters compel the viewers to share the nostalgia. Sanjib touches a sort of metaphorical note in mixing the yester years of the couple with the present time. He mounts the play taking a non-conventional path in his mounting of the scenes where in the back projection the different sites like the caffe, the river side or the Maidan is presented while the couple is stationed on one side of the stage and their young age is presented on the other side. With the help of a female commentator-like character reciting poetry and the woman’s inner soul singing songs, he bridges the time, as if. The sequences are so aesthetically composed that they seem to come out of a framed painting.

The aged couple are exquisitely portrayed by Sharmila Basu and Siddhartha Chakraborty. The young ages were presented by Sneha Mitra and Abhirup Choudhury. Himi Sharma’s rendering of songs and Bingsati Basu’s poetry gave the production its finesse. Sanjib’ stage design was aptly executed by Madan Haldar, while Souvik Bhattacharya’s lights and background score designs were commendable. 

The second work, The Hidden Sin, is a Bengali translation done by Debabrata Dasgupta, of James Yaffe’s adaptation named The Deadly Game of the Swiss writer Friederich Durenmatt’s novel ‘A Dangerous Game’. On a stormy night a person takes refuge at the house of a retired Judge where apart from the Judge three other persons are also present. These three are a retired Public Prosecutor, a Defense Attorney and a hang-man. The Judge and his three associates meet there everyday to play a game of mock trial whenever a stranger comes in, accusing the later of a crime. The game starts with arguments and counter arguments the result of which it is revealed that the stranger is responsible for the death of his boss. Though Sanjib builds up the dramatic sequences with care, but the desired impact remains missing. The fault lies greatly on the script that hampers the run of the play as well as fails in the reasonings of many a point. Especially in our Indian set-up the hangman dose not fit into the frame. The executioner in the Western society is far from the societal background of an Indian hang-man. This character could have been treated in a more rational way. But the performance of Kajal Shambhu deserves kudos. Bidyut Chakraborty’s Stranger or Souvik Bhattacharya’s Prosecutor were well executed. Sanjib acted as the Judge. But Abhirup Choudhury’s Defense Attorney was much wanting. The stage design by Sanjib and lights by Jayanta Mukhopadhyay brought out the right mood on the stage.     

The octogenarian thespian Ashok Mukherjee in Theatre Workshop’s Great Bengal Theatre

 

The octogenarian thespian Ashok Mukherjee in Theatre Workshop’s Great Bengal Theatre  

 

In commemoration of the 150 years of the commercial Bengali theatre, Theatre Workshop staged its latest production in a grand scale so to say, in tune with the play they had selected for their presentation. The play Great Bengal Theatre by Sumitro Bandopadhyay is an attempt to retell the story of the initial days of the so-called professional stage in the early twentieth century Calcutta. Theatre had mainly developed amongst the small affluent society of the Babus of the city. Though it had its petit bourgeoise traits of arrogance, corruption and self-promotion, it did things with pomp and grandeur. So, in order to accommodate these societal characteristics of the time Sumitro had to extend his play to a longer length than usual.

The play centers around a character called Jogen Ganguli who is a contemporary of the likes of Giris Chandra, Ardhendu Sekhar, Amritalal, and owns the theatre troupe Great Bengal Theatre which is in an utter financial crisis. Atulya, a young man has joined the group with a dream to bring in fresh air into Bengali theatre. According to his narrative Jogen endures the insults of the theatre hall owner who is a businessman to the core and is totally ignorant about the arts. But in order to save his dear theatre Jogen in spite of going in for compromises tries to stick to his principles. Unfortunately, in this process of conciliation the main actress of the troupe, who coming from a brothel has for the last twenty-five years made theatre her life, her only vocation, loses her position in the group and suffers humiliation. She commits suicide. Atulya urges Jogen to stage new plays and King Lear is selected as a result. Jogen plays Lear while a new young actress who believes she is the illegitimate child of Jogen, is given the role of Cordelia. Sumitro has brought in some associated and accessory matters some of which have little to do with the main theme in an attempt to suggest the political and social backdrop of the then theatre world of Bengal. And things like the tomfoolery parts of a person who writes lowly plays for Jogen’s production, or the flirtations of a wealthy man with the young actress, or the Partition of Bengal have only contributed in the lengthening of the play. One would have loved to watch instead a bit more of the King Lear portion where Lear faces Cordelia. This expectation of the viewers was more so as the great thespian Ashok Mukherjee in his mid-eighties performed the role of Jogen. It was a very mixed feeling to watch this actor on the stage as the role’s performance is not a cameo-type. He had to spend extended time on the stage delivering long dialogues. And it was a treat, of course, for the viewers to watch him give the character a classical flavour, and listen to his immaculate diction with perfect modulation of the voice at such an advanced age as his. Rina Halder in the role of the senior actress was commendable. Sumitro as Atulya, Debashis Roychoudhury as a patron of Jogen’s theatre, or Jagabandhu Chakraborty as the failed playwright or Shreya Banerjee as the young actress did their roles to the book. Neel Kaushik’s stage design was well executed by Bilu Dutta, while Sumit Chakraborty’ lights did their part. Sk. Israfil’s make-up works need to be appreciated. Music by Swapan Shome lacked the spirit of the run of the play.          

 

Shovabazar Pratibimba’s Commodus and Rashbehari Sanket’s Mritasouch – two recent productions worth viewing

 

Shovabazar Pratibimba’s Commodus and Rashbehari Sanket’s Mritasouch – two recent productions worth viewing

[It has been almost three and a half years that I had some activities in my blogspot. The last post was an attempted dissertation on the ‘Father’ characters in Bergman’s films vis-à-vis Strindberg’s Father. 

All this time I have been active as usual for the last very many decades, seeing different Bengali productions by different groups mainly of and around Calcutta. And regularly have been writing reviews of these works for a Bengali periodical.

I have decided to once again start blogging on my observations about the works that I have the opportunity to see. It would give some idea to those who may choose to read my blogs about the Bengali theatre scenario. So, I have decided to start afresh with the works that I have seen since the beginning of 2024. Till the end of May I have seen 14 performances apart from the ten that were staged in the festival of full-length plays organized by Sayak at Tapan Theatre. I would restrict my discussions to the fourteen that had their commercial presentations on the Calcutta stage. I begin with two works of two ‘small’ groups.]

The two productions that will feature in my present post are works of two young groups who are making their marks on the Calcutta stage for certain. Shovabazar Pratibimba’s staging of Commodus at Madhusudan Mancha had a fresh new look. The play based on the character of a Roman emperor naturally reminded one of the Oscar-winning film Gladiator. The play is written by Sumantra Chatterjee and is directed by Charnak Chatterjee. For a not-a-big group, handling of a period drama is certainly an ambitious project worth commendable. It has not been mentioned from which source Sumantra has penned his drama the setting of which is Rome of eighteen hundred years ago. He has very well narrated the story of the Roman emperor Commodus in his play, though some editing was needed that would have shortened the duration of the play. Different important situations and happenings of the Roman history of that time have been touched upon subtly in his narration of the story, which gives the theme its completeness. His apt handling of the characters like that of the elder sister Lucilla, the Roman senators Quintus and Cassius, or the consort Cleander or for that matter the lady-in waiting Marcia to unfold the different conspiracies and murders gave the play a steady rhythm throughout. 

Charnak’s designing in totality is worthy of appreciation. The commendable point to be noted was that stage, lights or music designing had been used to almost perfection. Bilu Dutta’s stage was simplistic yet gave the scenes their meaning, just as Soumen Chakraborty’s gimmick-less lighting design. Swapan Bandopadhyay’s music was modestly appropriate. Some of the dramatic moments that Charnak could construct with the accompanying music and back-light illumination are creditable, indeed. Credit should also be given to the planning of shifting in between scenes.

In contrast to these praiseworthy sections of the production, acting remains to be much wanting. The team needs a through brushing up in its acting performance. But the devotion and the commitment of the bunch of young members of the group that could be felt would definitely make them better performers in the days to come. 

The second production is that of Rashbehari Sanket. They staged Tarit Mitra’s Mritasouch. There was a time when snake-charmers from Rajasthan used to come to the city and would bring out different snakes, small and big, from their clay-thatched wicker baskets, playing a lilting tune on their pungis. The women accompanying them would dance in their long flowing dresses decked up with ornaments made from bones and metals. All these came to my mind as the story of the play revolves round a family of the snake-charming Kalbelia community of Rajasthan. But the interesting point is that the dramatist has beautifully adapted Albert Camus’ drama The Misunderstanding into this Rajasthani context.

Camus’ play is an ideal example of his trademark concept of absurdism and existentialism. He believed that whenever man tries to find order in his surroundings of disorder, absurdity is born. And man is subjected to a contradiction that he himself has created. In this play of his he shows how a son after twenty long years of absence returns back to his family and thereby suffers a great existential crisis, as do his mother and sister who have failed to recognize him. The mother and her daughter kill the unsuspecting men who come to stay in the lodge and usurp up their belongings. They rationalize their acts by saying that they are relieving the people of the very burden of living in this hostile and unfriendly world! Their existential crisis lies in their pursuing a dream of a beautiful illusory world where they would like to live in with the wealth they gather from the travelers. The son in order to find out about his mother and his sister tries to play a game that in turn results in him being killed. So, man defines his existence by his own choice. But for all three it is non-communication that leads them to their evil destiny. Camus has pointed out the irrationality in the conflict between violence and love, and also the absurdity of morality.

Tarit has very fittingly transposed the Kalbelia family into the play keeping the Camus structure intact, except the ending of the play. However, for those who are unaware of Camus’ play would find it interesting. The dramatist has very aptly incorporated the Rajasthani folk culture which has given the play a different dimension. The three main characters have been very well structured and been given their individual weightage. As the dramatist has drifted from Camus’ ending sequence, the characters of the old man and of the wife of the son remains unfinished, and lacking in rationality.       

Sashi Guha’s directorial acumen has aptly been proved. In designing the play on the stage, it was a challenge to bring the nomadic life in the Rajasthani perspective. He had presented a number of dramatic moments that the viewers would remember for a long time. Abhijit Acharya’s music is a very important ingredient of the production, and it gave an accompanying support to Guha’s building up of the play. Mention should be made of Dipankar De’s light arrangements and Hiran Mitra’s stage designing. Arpan Mallick and Panna Mandal did a very laudable job in designing of the dresses. Alok Debnath’s make-up did provide a visual richness to the characters. Kasturi Chatterjee’s choreographic designing was solely a dramatic element that remains as a bedrock of the production.

Every member of the team was apt in his or her performance. Priyanka Guha’s subtle expression of the inner conflicts of the mother as well as the weariness of the character is very well brought out with the right gestures. Ratna Chakraborty’s daughter had to bear a lot of work load with her dances as well as bringing out the character’s suspicious nature together with the yearning for the dream world. Sumitkumar Roy’s son was yet another of this young talent’s noteworthy performance with his perfect diction and his silent expressions.

Before signing off for the present these two works of two relatively not very familiar groups of the Bengali theatre family certainly is an indication for a not too feeble future for the Bengali theatre.

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.