Suddenly a few weeks ago, the Delhi theatre scene was visited by a breeze from Bengal.
Three productions from and of life in Kolkata were presented over a single weekend.
Contemporary Hindi theatre group Padatik of Kolkata brought its fine production of Ho Sakta Hai Do Aadmi Do Kursiyan, followed in quick succession by a production in English by Theatreworms, Delhi, of Rabindranath Tagore’s Shesher Kobita, and the very next day Atul Satya Kaushik of Mumbai performed Ballygunj 1990, a thriller set in Kolkata. Bengal seemed to be the flavour of the hour.
It’s a rare moment on the Delhi stage when we get to witness two consummate actors matching their wits against one another. Padatik gave us an opportunity to see Vinay Sharma and Ashok Singh play off each other’s talents. The play is conceived largely as a series of monologues, in which the two actors essay a range of different characters who interact with a chair.
The production challenges us even as it entertains. On display are a range of emotions: a low-down employee’s excited joy at sitting briefly in the big boss’s chair, the fury and distress of a man seeing the destruction of an age-old chair, the pathetic reaching out to a stranger to narrate a story of loss, the bewildered anguish of a cuckolded husband... existential angst and contemporary reality jostle with one another, edging one another, raising questions of a philosophical nature.
At its most obvious, the chair becomes a metaphor for power and privilege. At other places, the chair is seen as the debris of civilisation.
In yet another sketch, the chair becomes almost a threatening stranger. As Vinay writes in his Director’s Note: “Each scene is open to questions and interpretations. Each scene is complete and stands by itself. But yet there is also a meaning implied in the order in which the scenes are arranged. Change the order of the scenes and it could all seem different.”
In Gopal Sharma and Jalabala Vaidya’s wonderful intimate space of Akshara Theatre, on a stage as lit as the auditorium, the actors use their facial muscles, a stare, a strung, a half-completed gesture to narrate a story. The play explores urban relationships and suggests that we are given life to experience compassion, not to inflict violence or to succumb to inner decay.
Other than being Artistic Director of Padatik, Vinay Sharma’s own theatre initiatives go by the name of ‘Rikh’, which means to scratch, to tear up (the ground), to draw, to engrave, inscribe, trace a line, to delineate or outline.
In Poem of an Ending, upper-middle-class bhadralok Amit Babu educated as a lawyer in England, quoting Shakespeare, Shaw and Donne, returns to India, only to fall in love with a governess in Shillong.
Drawn to her by her poetry and love for nature, he wants to marry her but the union in doomed.
What is romance? Can it culminate in marriage or does marriage kill it? Director Kaushik Bose uses all the dramatic elements: text, choreography, sound and lighting to bring alive Tagore’s poetic version.
Using contemporary dance to illuminate the inner world of the characters in a century-old story is innovative. The dancing is well-choreographed by Durba Ghose. The lighting is outstanding and most of the performances ring true. A bold experiment. The writer is a Delhi-based theatre director and can be reached at feisal.alkazi@rediffmail.com