With cinema halls and theatres opening up after a long spell of the Covid-induced pandemic, the city thespians are back to enthral the audiences with newer and engaging productions and young theatre worker and filmmaker Bappa has come up with a relevant story all set to debut on stage this May 7.
Based on Nabendu Sen's story Nayan Kabirer Pala, the eponymous play produced by Bappa's theatre group Simla A Bong Positive, will also see him acting along with Shubhankar Mitra.
"If cinema is my passion, theatre is my life and after a long time, I will be acting in a play besides directing it. This particular play is perhaps Nabendu Sen's most intense and contextual one and has two comedians, who no longer have any roleplay whether on stage or screen. It's about how a deep sense of frustration and melancholia has set in their lives and how or whether at all they will overcome the same," tells Bappa.
He has kept the script and has only played around with design parts where it's shown how the characters fight out and emerge from their inner dark and depressed zones. "There are a few directorial inputs from my side but no change in the script has been made since Nabendu Sen is a very intense playwright and all his writings have very strong scripts," he adds.
With the pandemic now becoming a thing of pas and people returning en masse to watch good theatres, Bappa feels that theatre will again regain its old glory in the coming months. But he also feels that Bengal is lagging many miles behind other regional theatres in terms of production. "A lot of experiments is taking place in the realms of theatre. We too never believe in proscenium theatre in the strict sense of the term. We as a group had started out with street theatre and we have been doing intimate theatre. Even when we use the proscenium, we break the proscenium style. I believe in experimental plays and we are moving closer to device theatre with our upcoming productions," he tells us.
The director plans to stage their plays Dosar and Baki Ek in completely new formats besides Sukumar Roy's Hajabarala which will be presented in device theatre format this year.
Bappa has also finished shooting for the Hindi thriller Girgit that's in the postproduction stage, besides Psycho, a limited six-episode web series. "Currently I am working on a Hindi OTT project with Hindi star cast and will be mostly concentrating on the Hindi space only," he signs off.
Nayan Kabirer Pala will be staged in Minerva Theatre on May 7, 6.30 pm.
Tickets available at the counter.