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| Sreelekha Mitra at Stree. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya |
Friends, family and a distinguished roster of American playwrights ? Edward Albee, Tony Kushner and John Guare, among others ? gathered in the Majestic Theatre on May 9 to honour Arthur Miller, who died in February at 89.
Miller was celebrated as a man of rock-solid integrity and political conviction, with a firm belief in the transformative power of theatre. Providing the opening and closing remarks was Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr, a friend of Miller?s and former senior minister at Riverside Church. ?Arthur was brilliant, so funny and on occasion, strangely tender,? he said.
Some of the most poignant words spoken at the memorial were, not surprisingly, Miller?s own. Daniel Day-Lewis, who is married to Miller?s daughter Rebecca, read from an essay in Miller?s collection Echoes Down the Corridor. Joan Copeland, Miller?s sister, read from The American Clock, a Miller play inspired by Studs Terkel?s Hard Times, in which she starred on Broadway in 1980.
Kushner ? who said he decided to be a playwright at six after watching his mother play Linda Loman in a production of Death of a Salesman ? said Miller had the ?curse of empathy? and thanked him for writing plays that ask, ?What is your relevancy to the survival of the race??
Honor Moore, a poet who was Miller?s longtime friend and neighbour in Roxbury, Conn, recalled their last conversation. ?I remember him saying only two or three weeks before he died: ?When life disappointed me, I always had my writing?.?
Perhaps the most emotional speech came from Albee, who opened by lashing out at the neo-conservative New Criterion magazine because of what he called a ?vile and sniggering unsigned editorial? written about Miller after his death.
?Some writers matter and some do not. Some of our most clever writers don?t matter,? Albee said. ?They teach us nothing and they do not render ourselves coherent.? He ended emphatically: ?Arthur Miller was a writer who mattered. A lot.?
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| Very Progressive People being staged at Max Mueller Bhavan. Picture by Aranya Sen |
Of the plethora of tributes that marked Tagore?s birth anniversary, an evening was devoted only to the Bard?s heroines. Involving some known faces from the small screen, the show, titled Stree, featured dramatised monologues alongside Tagore?s songs.
Tagore?s heroines underwent different phases of transition during the inter-War period (1919-1939), which was the essence of Stree,? said Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee, who conceived the show presented by 100 Pipers, Patton and Open Doors, at Tollygunge Club last Saturday.
Apart from actresses Anasuya Majumder, Sreelekha Mitra, Chaiti Ghoshal and Bijoylakshmi Burman, there was stage artiste Sahana Chatterjee, singer Pramita Mullick and dancer Priti Patel. Anasuya portrayed a woman in conflict from Two Sisters, while Chaiti presented a woman?s struggle against odds through a recitation of Shadharon Meye.
Sreelekha recited The Gardener and Bijoylakshmi enacted the role of Damini, a woman who asserts her love for an ascetic. Sahana read out a letter by Mrinalini Devi to her poet husband. Priti Patel took the stage for a dance recital personifying Chitrangada, while Tagore songs by Pramita Mullick lent a melodious note.
Like the other Mumbai group that Seagull also hosted this week, the production Very Progressive People featured young people in theatre ? always a sign of hope. Taran Khan dramatised the interviews she had taken of three women: Sultana Jafri, Zehra Mehdi and Shaukat Azmi, the wives of Ali Sardar Jafri, S.M. Mehdi and Kaifi Azmi respectively. Their more famous husbands were comrades and communists who, during the 1940s, stayed together in Mumbai, struggling to make a living. Although each attained eminence in different professions subsequently, all three wrote Urdu poetry and drama.
Their young wives sharing the same quarters became close friends, and the no-frills play presented their reminiscences about those days ? like the actress Shaukat?s hard times with daughter Shabana in her infancy, or the cheerful Sultana?s splendid culinary skills.
At 40 minutes, the show was perhaps too short, and distracted spectators from the enacted live portions whenever the video clips overlapped.
