Aneek’s Barak-Bangla Natya Utsav is going from strength to strength. The festival’s third edition, held at Tapan Theatre (May 18-20), featured the group’s latest production and two plays from Assam’s Barak Valley where every cultural expression of the Bengali-speaking community carries an urgency to resist majoritarianism and assert a distinct identity.
Race Theatre from Pailapool presented Trikal Pasha on the inaugural evening. Written and directed by Indranil Dey, the play started well, drawing on the lives of a few individuals living under a totalitarian regime. However, the production failed to create much impact as the script went haywire. The actors, despite their experience, could not sustain interest.
Rabindranath Tagore’s fiction finds many takers among Bengalis living away from Calcutta. Silchar-based Ajker Projonmo Theatre’s choice of Noukadubi thus looked promising. The group decided to take the road already taken, admitting its debt to Rituparno Ghosh’s celluloid version of the same. Biplab Das’s script adhered to Ghosh’s treatment of the original, including the scene division.
Sayan Biswas, the director, demonstrated competence in handling a mostly young cast, with the veterans chipping in. The lead actors impressed with understated portrayals. Biswas’s use of multiple entry and exit points to the proscenium, his exploration of the aisle, and his extension of the downstage area to stage the boat accident scene speak volumes about his expertise. He also made innovative use of pre-recorded Rabindrasangeet to underline the moods and to comment on the twists and turns in the narrative. The lighting scheme was spot on. While one cannot expect a visiting troupe to achieve precision in stage decor, the costumes, especially the male attire, disappointed as they failed to establish the period.
Aneek’s own Angina Jurhe Bhor, written and directed by Gaurav Das,
is poised to redefine our assessment of Calcutta’s public theatre and assimilation of indigenous performing traditions, in this case, gomira from South Dinajpur. The way Das marshalled an ensemble cast and handled a drama spanning over 150 minutes was quite commendable.