Monday,11,2019

Published with photographs on December 31st, 2004 in The Telegraph India.

Shakespeare to Saadat Hasan Manto, Tom Stoppard to Akhtarujjaman Elias... The theatre circuit was particularly busy this year, with young groups and artistes taking their acts to bookstores and club lawns. Add to that the annual visitors from outside ' Naseeruddin Shah bringing down The Prophet or Kinaetma Theatre winding its way to the Tolly greens with The Silk Route, Peter Engkvist staging Tongue-Tied or Habib Tanvir presenting Zahreeli Hawa. Metro takes a ringside view of some home productions that had experimentation and boldness as the buzzwords in 2004.

Khowabnama

Source: Bangladeshi writer Akhtarujjaman Elias' novel Khowabnama (The Dream Narrative)

The troupe: Kalyani Natyacharcha Kendra debuted with another Elias novel Chilekothar Shepai six years ago and followed up with Jasimuddin's Nakshikanthar Math and Aswacharit.

The play: Dramatised by Samir Dasgupta and directed by Kishore Sengupta, Khowabnama explores the class struggle among labourers and peasants against the backdrop of the Tebagha movement.

The 30-member cast delivers a touching portrayal of the tensions between the fishermen and sharecroppers, and the fight put up by the peasants against the landlords. Khowabnama premiered at the fifth Ganakrishti Natya Utsav in July 2004.

Kolkatar Elektra

Source: Buddhadeb Basu's play Kolkatar Elektra, derived from Greek mythology and the works of Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Jean Paul Sartre.

The troupe: Founded in 1992, Swapna Sandhani made a mark with productions like Buddhadeb Basu's verse drama Pratham Partha, the investigative thriller Tiktiki featuring Soumitra Chattopadhyay and Tara Teen Bon, an adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters.

The play: Elektra, a witness to her mother Clytemnestra's infidelity, urges brother Orestes to avenge their father Agamemnon's death. The tale of love, revenge and retribution finds a modern parallel in the Bengali production. Director Koushik Sen contemporises the Hellenic myth by setting his characters in present-day Calcutta.

Two Elektras are juxtaposed ' one living in Calcutta essayed by Sen's wife Reshmi, and the Hellenic character played by Sudipa Basu. Sen has retained Buddhadeb Basu's lyrical verse drama, blending the past and the present. The play premiered at the Odeon Theatre Festival this year.

Measure for Measure

Source: William Shakespeare's dark comedy Measure for Measure

The troupe: Jadavpur University English department. Under Prof Ananda Lal's direction, the department has been engaged in presenting motley plays over the years. The repertoire features The Importance of Being Earnest, The Merchant of Venice and Shakuntala.

The play: Director Lal used the technique of cross-dressing, in which men swap roles and attire with women and vice versa, to bypass the problem of 'too many men, too few female roles'. But the actors kept the audience absorbed through the two-and-a-half-hour-long performance, presented by Theatrecian.

Badnam Manto

Source: Two stories by Saadat Hasan Manto, Kali Shalwar and Hatak

The troupe: Twenty-nine-year-old Rangakarmee is the leading Hindi troupe steered by Usha Ganguli. Some of its plays are Rudali, Court Martial, Himmatmai, Mukti, Antar-Yatra and Kashinama.

The play: As a tribute to the 50th death anniversary of the Urdu writer in 2005, Badnam Manto is the first part of a three-collage project planned by Rangakarmee. The Hindi play weaves in Kali Shalwar and Hatak, both of which are stark portrayals of women's exploitation with prostitution as the dominant theme.

Senjuti Roy has rendered a riveting performance as the prostitute who tries to fight back, while director Ganguli as the sutradhar combines the two strands. The other two episodes of the Manto series ' the second is in the making ' will deal with the writer's works on the Partition and the traumatic effect it had on him.

Sateroi July

Source: Scripted by playwright-director Bratya Basu on the basis of the Godhra carnage

The troupe: Twenty-five-year-old Ganakrishti has come up with a series of noteworthy productions in recent times including Ashalin, Aranyadeb, Winkle Twinkle and Virus-M, with Basu at the reins.

The play: Sateroi July is set in post-Godhra Gujarat, where a group of youths from a minority community has been implicated in a rape case.

With the judiciary and the government joining hands with fundamentalist forces, the play takes a loud look at how politics manipulates religion.

Sateroi July opened the Ganakrishti Natya Utsab in July this year with a cast of 40, including TV actor Pijush Ganguly.