A 250-year-old house in north Kolkata was the setting for an informal theatrical performance on Saturday evening.
The play turned the clock back. Daw Bari, on Shib Krishna Daw Lane in Jorasanko, designed like an opera-style theatre, was famous for hosting night-long jatras in its heyday.
The play that was staged is called Kaagaz Ke Gubbare (paper balloons). The script is based on the works of one of the most celebrated Urdu writers, Ismat Chughtai.
It was the second in what the organisers had planned as a series of six different performances at six different properties in Kolkata.
The Telegraph had reported the inaugural performance, held on September 16 last year at the 94-year-old Tandonbari on Baranashi Ghosh Street in Jorasanko, not far from Daw Bari.
The campaign, titled “Heritage X Theatre” and billed as a “theatre-for-conservation” model, aims to share a part of the earnings through ticket sales with owners of the houses for renovation if needed.
Around 100 tickets, each priced at Rs 400, were sold online for the Saturday show. It was a complete sellout, organisers said.
The play has been directed by Anubha Fatehpuria, programme director of Padatik Theatre, an experimental theatre group that turned 50 last year.
“Six stories have been adapted. There are also selected writings from her (Chughtai’s) essays and some of her interviews. All of this I have woven into one performance script. The play opened in September 2022. It has since travelled to various festivals across India,” said Fateh-
puria.
“The play has been redesigned to fit into the Daw Bari. So that it responds to the architecture of Daw Bari. The house has a very specific style. The entire first floor was designed as an opera-styled theatre. In the balconies, people would actually watch jatra performances that happened downstairs, in the courtyard and Durga dalan,” she added.
Mudar Patherya, a communications consultant and social worker who has been steering the campaign, said the theatre and heritage were working fine together.
“This draw of heritage is turning out to be a much bigger thing than what we had expected.... A lot of south Kolkata has turned out to watch,” he said.
