NSD’s 14th Bharangam festival does not have famous names of international directors nor does it feature that many Indian great theatre persons, even so there are some exciting plays by Polish directors and some from Indian directors. There is no medley of snippets from here and there as a curtain raiser either and one enters the festival right away with a performance by the Master, Ratan Thiyam on Day One. Keeping the 150th anniversary of Rabindranth Tagore in mind, Ratan and his Chorus Repertory company from Manipur, are opening the festival on January 8 with the highly symbolic play King of the Dark Chamber.
This play was made famous by the Bengali thespians Shombu and Tripti Mitra. The play is about a king who was strong but lonely. The people have been alienated from him by the courtiers who manipulate the king. A young girl comes to town and the king living in his “dark chamber” on meeting her realises his loneliness. The girl’s sympathetic and humane attitude makes the people love her. The courtiers are enraged to see the growing influence of the king. The girl sacrifices her life for the people. The king casts his lot with the exploited class and fights against himself.
This year there are 81 plays at Bharangam. The emphasis is on Rabindranath Tagore on his 150th birth anniversary. There are 14 performances based or worked about the life and writings of the poet laureate.
One of the interesting plays this week is Journey to Dakghar directed by Manish Mitra to be performed on January 9 at 4.30 at SRC.
During World War II, Polish doctor and educator Janusz Korczak selected Dakghar (The Post Office) as the play the orphans in his care in the Warsaw Ghetto would perform. This was on July 18, 1942, less than three weeks before they were to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. In her book, The King Of Children, Korczak’s English-language biographer, Betty Jean Lifton, says that Dr Korczak may have been trying to find a way for the children in his orphanage to accept death. Journey to Dakghar deals with the original play as well as with his journey in writing it. The play also includes its production history, with regard to both the poet and major international productions like that by Janusz Korxzac in the Warshaw Ghetto.
Khud Aur Khuda, a solo performance directed by Sanskrit scholar the erudite Kavalam Naryan Panikar at 6 pm at Sammukh on January 10 is a philosophical piece, inspired by Tagore, which speaks about the relationship between the individual and the universe, the human and the divine, Man and God, the micro and the macro. We human beings bring to earth the smile of God, but we fail to realise the potential of who we are. In our elusive search for what is “real” we miss the divine spark that shines within us. The performance, choreographed by Girish Sopanam, focuses on the search for the ultimate, its expectations and failures, happiness and suffering. The constant chase that one is caught up in, both within and without, to prove one’s own identity and validity, merely goes to show that the hunter and the hunted are one and the same. The performance ends with the great realisation that the pursuit of the eternal begins and ends in oneself.
Rakta Karabi or Red Oleanders another famous play by Tagore is being staged in the original Bengali by Subashish Gangopadhyay on January 13 at 4.30 pm at SRC.
Tagore was inspired to write the play when he saw some red oleanders lying crushed under a piece of machinery. A king presides over a site where his people are digging for gold. The life of monotonous hardships led by the labour force is interrupted by the arrival of a young girl called Nandini. She asks the king to come out of his isolated quarters, but he does not heed her. However, this changes when one day the power-hungry sardars lead an uprising against the king, who finally joins Nandini to fight against all that he had hitherto stood for. Although the play deals with the regimentation and exploitation of technology that leads to dehumanisation, Nandini represents eternal love that needs to be awakened to free ourselves from the shackles of exploitation and injustice.
Heisnam Tombi, the iconoclast director from Imphal, Manipur, takes up Tagore’s Hungry Stones (Kshudito Pashan) to illustrate the plight of women. A man purchases a woman and gifts her to the Badshah. The woman cries hysterically. Are her laments for herself alone or is she grieving for the entire female race? The central stone statues come alive at night transforming themselves into enchantresses. They overpower the men who unwittingly venture there. How should the weeping statues be interpreted? Do they thirst for male company or do they want to be freed from the bond of the enchantress.
H. Tombi’s work is a visual celebration of the power of the human body and its soul. It will be performed at SRC on January 14 at 4.30 pm.
Tagore’s Chandalika is being staged by Bangladeshi director Bivash Bishu Chowdhry in Bangla (January 11 at LTG, 6.30 pm)and by Usha Ganguli in Hindi at Kamani at 7 pm on January 13.
Based on Buddhist text, the play tells the tale of Prakriti, an untouchable girl living on the society’s periphery.
One day Ananda, a passing Buddhist monk, asks her for water. She hesitates because of her caste. He dismisses her hesitation with the statement that God created everyone equal.
Recognised as a valid human presence for the first time in her life, Prakriti falls desperately in love with Ananda. She pleads with her mother, a woman with extraordinary magical powers, to cast a spell on Ananda so that he returns.
The play, while presenting the manifold forms of love, including conflict and violence, allows a certain insight into the polarities of life in the 21st century.