Lok staged Stone Age at GD Birla Sabhagar. Picture: Anindya Shankar Ray

Shriek of Silence performed Merchant of Venice — The Kolkata Musical at Kalamandir

Youth theatre group Shriek of Silence (S.O.S) marked its second anniversary with the six-day long Kolkata Youth Theatre Festival (KYTF) that started in February and ended on March 29. Many new youth theatre groups in the city like Gujob, Koli-Kotha, Bodnaam Urotaar and Moromiya along with older ones like Lok and S.O.S staged performances across the city, covering a range of issues from friendship and social identities to religious hatred and women’s emancipation. Praktoni, a theatre group from Bangladesh, staged Prothom Partho written by Buddhadeva Bose.

Lok, one of the oldest youth theatre groups in the city, staged their play The Stone Age. Written and directed by Aditya Sengupta, it follows the story of five friends — Arnab, Anindi, Rashed, Shevvy and Rupsha — living in New York City in a haze of drugs, violence, hatred, racism and sadness as they struggle to seek their own identities in a land that is not their own. While the message may be dire, the performances were far from it. Meghdut Roy Chowdhuryas Arnab, the brother who loves his mute sister but spends more time with friends and music, and Kheya Chattopadhyay as Anindi, his sister, did very well. They were ably supported by the rest of the cast comprising Soumyajit Majumdar as Rashed the illegal immigrant facing religious hatred, Abhijit Bhattacharya as Shevvy the casanova, Najrin Islam as the lovelorn Rupsha and Apratim Chatterjee as Shubhomoy, who visits the five friends from India.

S.O.S presented the 20th show of Jawab, a street play written and directed by Suprovo Tagore as well as the play Merchant of Venice — The Kolkata Musical, with which the festival came to an end. Adapted and directed by Suprovo Tagore and choreographed by Ritwika Chaudhuri, Merchant of Venice — The Kolkata Musical is a take on the Burrabazar culture of Calcutta in the 1970s. Antonio, Shylock and Bassanio have been portrayed as Ananta Roy Chowdhury, Sharmaji and Bishwajit Mukherjee respectively, and Pragya (Portia) is representative of women’s emancipation seen in the city in the ’70s. The play covers elements like the land reforms act, immigration and the baby fodder scam. Courtroom sequences appear as flashbacks in the play. A smart piece of art direction saw the Sleeping Owl, made famous by Sukumar Ray, replace the Lady of Justice in the courtroom scenes, depicting how the law is always resting. Dipanwita Chatterjee as Pragya, Rishav Chatterjee as Ananta, Samannay Saha as the flamboyant Bishwajit and Dibya Chatterjee as Sharmaji put up powerful performances.

Raya Ghosh