Mad About Drama’s latest play Kafir, a re-imagination of Tagore’s Bisarjan, staged at Gyan Manch on January 31 and powered by t2, focused on how the lines between organised crime and organised religion get blurred and how the power dynamics in both structures mimic each other. Kafir used the visual aesthetics of a gangster film, a soundtrack that was an eclectic mix of heavy metal and western classical, and other elements like lyric videos and episode supertitles.

The thought
“I wanted to re-imagine Bisarjan using epic theatre and Brechtian alienation techniques since my college days. I felt that the text demanded and deserved a treatment that invited a rational debate,” said director Aritra Sengupta, who played Raghupati. “Even if we had to do away with scenes or characters, we didn’t change Tagore’s text. This made the rehearsal really difficult, because the actors had to juxtapose western performance idioms like clowning or beatboxing with Tagore’s words,” he added.

The make-up
One of the standout elements of the play was the make-up. It was mime make-up  in a gangster sequence. “The point was to recreate a Tarantino-meets-Daniel Day Lewis-in-Gangs of New York feel and a clown femme fatale is a dream to pull off. It’s like putting a beautiful woman in an androgynous get-up and have her look intriguing,” said Anisha Mandal, who headed the make-up team for the production. Their biggest challenge? “Needing to make something look like a million bucks with a lot less zeroes,” said Anisha.

The sound
M.A.D founder-member Soham Majumdar, a rookie when it comes to stage sound, took over the sound console for the play (with a little help from M.A.D member Probaar Mukherjee). “This play, with its eclectic soundscape, gave me the scope to experiment with sampling and mixing. Because the light and sound set-up was done on stage, being an actor actually helped me improvise a lot,” said Soham. 

The stage and props
It was not an easy task to arrange all the props within the deadline according to the colour scheme visualised by the director. “We had to make sure that none of the props looked out of place. Naina Punwani and I had a tiresome week for pre-production but it was worth it,” said Abheri Dutta. For set designers Sabyasachi Chakraborty (right) and Rajarshi Das, the biggest challenge was the fact that Kafir was a mood-bound play that was difficult to match.

The ACTORS
Dibyayudh Das started prepping for his role as Jaysingha from December. “I was told that the reason I was chosen as Jaysingha is because he had a lot to say, which he could not, just like me. I started with mastering the lines and getting used to the dialect followed by the physical preparations for which I hit the gym for two months. Then came understanding the character,” said Dibyayudh.

This was Sounak Kundu’s first performance on stage and he almost gave up during the rehearsals. “The trial scene with Raghupati and Nakkhatraray (Sushroto Chattopadhyay) was very difficult to pull off but we ended up getting the loudest applause for it,” said Sounak.

 It took Arunima Chowdhury some time to get into the character of Aparna. “I had to break my constructs for Aparna, which has been given a very different rendition in Kafir,” she said.

Asmita Nandy
Pictures: Sayantan Ghosh