Soumitra Chatterjee and Dwijen Bandopadhyay stage Qurbani at Madhusudan Mancha. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

The screen has brought him name and fame but it’s the stage that Soumitra Chatterjee finds hard to stay away from for long. In between performances at the four-day festival of plays hosted by his group Mukhomukhi, Satyajit Ray’s favourite actor is busy directing his brand new play Atmakatha.

Chatterjee takes t2 to backstage...

What is Atmakatha about?

This is my adaptation or rather a translation almost — because I have made only minimal changes to make this the story of a Bengali family — of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s play Autobiography.

It’s a very intense, thought-provoking play about illusion, reality, fantasy, the creative process and, of course, relationships. The play is about this highly acclaimed writer, I call him Subhankar, who at 78 decides to write his autobiography. There are three women in the play — the wife Uttara played by Lily Chakraborty, the wife’s sister Basanti played by my daughter Poulomi and a young student Pragya (Damini Mukherjee), who is doing a research project on him and his work. I play the writer.

Atmakatha starts off with Pragya’s questions, as she probes his work and personal relationships. Gradually the writer finds gaps between his own perception of himself and what he actually was.

And how does the play end?

It doesn’t. There is no composite story; there’s just a series of revelations, as different characters give their points of view and you have various versions of reality, layers and layers of existence and the author’s soul searching which leads him to a deeper level of understanding.

Why did you choose this play?

I had enjoyed reading Autobiography a few years back and being partial to plays on the complexities of human relationships, I have been wanting to try it out. It seemed all the more appropriate now because I am closer to the central character in age and it is easy for me to slip into this role. Since there were no ready translations available I decided to do it myself.

What do you think of Elkunchwar’s plays?

I admire him and this particular piece is very well-crafted. Calcutta is familiar with his Wada trilogy but here he does some newer and very interesting experiments with time — the way time past and time present are put before the audience. And there are various points of view converging on one point.... There is one incident which is played over and over from various perspectives, like in Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashoman. Even as a literary text the play offers valuable insights because here it is a literary person attempting to write a memoir.

Atmakatha will be staged at Tapan Theatre every Sunday at 6.30pm from July 6