A moment from A Good Play

M.A.D (Mad About Drama), a group of young theatre enthusiasts from across the city, staged A Good Play at GD Birla Sabhagar last Monday.

Soul-stirring, well-coordinated, bold and entertaining… the play written and directed by Aritra Sengupta, questioned man’s hypocrisy as well as a stage actor’s devotion to his art and profession.

In the process, it paid tribute to the so-called lesser men of theatre (read set designers, prompters and others) and depicted how their destinies are interwoven with their art.

The successful playing out of the play-within-a-play format highlighted the conflict between who we are and who we want to be, between conscience and inner demons, between creativity and commercial diktats. It asked those questions that scare us and mocked the hypocrisy of modern times.

Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare, Shaw and Brecht to theatre artistes closer home (Utpal Dutt, Girish Karnad and Badal Sircar), the group has developed an original style. It is not always easy to produce a bilingual play but the production incorporated three languages — Bengali, Hindi and English.

The energy of the group is infectious and that was seen through the characters of light man Bablu Bose and prompter Junior, played by Soumya Mukherji and Soumendra Bhattacharya.

One of the characters in the play, a theatre critic, was asked his opinion of the youth theatre scene in Bengal. His answer was not earth-shattering but one could feel, sitting in an auditorium packed with the young, the future of theatre in Bengal depends on how much it can be of, for and by the young. Unlike most other things.

A GOOD PLAY

Group: M.A.D

Writer/Director: Aritra Sengupta

Production design: Alokananda Das, Ritwika Chowdhury, Radhika Saha, Debomita Mukherjee, Anisha Mandal, Ankita Boral, Aesha Das

Lights: Subhrajyoti Basu

Production styling: Arka Sengupta, Manvi Agarwal, Radha Saikia, Abhyam Shukla, Meggna Ray Singh

Cast: Soumendra Bhattacharya, Soumya Mukherji, Soham Majumdar, Aritra Sengupta, Akshay Kapoor, Somak Ghosh, Sayantan Banerjee, Sharmistha Pandey, Mayurakshi Sen, Debarati Sarkar, Ayanti Ghosh, Debargha Mukherjee, Dibyendu Tarafder, Romit Roy, Agni Debburman, Saikat Bose, Utsarjana Mutsuddi

Alliance Francaise hosted a party for the cast and crew of Gates to India Song on Thursday evening at The Palladian Lounge after their final performance in Calcutta. The Bonjour India team, high on their successful third show at Jorasanko Thakurbari, dug into some old-fashioned Bengali cuisine with dal, mocha, bhetki maachher paturi, mishti doi, rosogolla and more. Glimpses...

Alliance Francaise director Stephane Amalir with actors Jim Sarbh and Nandita Das

Fabrice Etienne, the consul general of France in India, with Rima, Comtesse de Mortemart