Standing with Valmiki, Vyasa, Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy, the Bengal Renaissance poet, Rabindranath Tagore revitalised Indian imagery while blending the best of Eastern and Western philosophies into his diction. “We blend local language and culture. Here, we used the form of Burrakatha and a little bit of Yakshagana in our presentation,” says Swapan Mondal, director of city-based theatre ensemble, Shudrka. The company will exemplify its ode to the literary icon on Rabindra Jayanti, the annually celebrated cultural festival, honouring the poet’s birth anniversary.
Titled Dwikhondita, the adaptation is a playlet, composed of excerpts from Rabindranath Tagore’s short plays, Gandharir Abedon (Gandhari’s Plea) and Karna Kunti Sambad. The piece will illustrate Swapan's retelling of The Mahabharata including the infamous dice game and the Kurukshetra battle. While the first segment observes Gandhari’s psychological trauma tearing her apart, the second bit deconstructs the manipulation of Kunti. The underlying purport of the narratives accentuates the demolishing tendencies of the patriarchal gaze. A lot more is revealed as he lets us in on his affinity for literature. “The likes of Michael Chekov, Laban, Lecoq, Grotoskwi, and Boal helped me find my voice as a thespian,” he tells us, adding, “When I was growing up, the theatre was an integral part of my life. It was not something that was imposed upon me. I kind of grew with it.”
The Bengali rubric of the show can be loosely translated to mean a deadlock, a split in between conflicts. Swapan, who has more than three decades of theatre under his belt, has kept the set designs ‘minimalistic, symbolic and beautiful,’ to portray the idea. The impending stage adaptation will be one of the fairly new theatrical productions from this year. Although earlier during the pandemic, Shudrka’s eponymous presentation came out on its YouTube channel, the sets have been changed completely this time. The cast members include Souravi Ray, Sohini Basu, Rahul Max, Pranay Bharadwaj, Aditya Singh, Reshma Begum and Ananth Bilugu.
Call-in show. On May 9, 8.30 pm. At Hyderabad Bangalee Samity stage, Domalguda
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