Biswas at her best in Tagore’s feminist tale

[1]

Seema Biswas is a great actor, both on stage and screen. I remember her in the role of Nati Binodini, a play directed by Bapi Bose, during Biswas’ stint at the National School of Drama (NSD) repertory in the eighties. In the play based on the autobiography of a 19th century actress, Biswas was superb in her instinctive grasp of the artiste’s traumatic life.

She showcases the same instinct while portraying a wife who abandons her marital life and then writes a letter to her husband. The character of Mrinal, as etched in Guru Rabindranath Tagore’s Stree Patra, is about a beautiful woman who is sidelined by her husband and his family because of her intelligence. Denied her identity, she decides to assert her individuality and breaks free.
Biswas, one the finest products of the NSD, did a remarkable job of Mrinal. Dressed in a sari, she portrayed the character with deep understanding and energetic improvisations. Unlike actor Savita Kundra, who also did the same play but with a deep examination of the relationship between Mrinal and the young girl who comes to live with the family, Biswas did not explore the attitude of the girl and her own reaction to the adulation of the girl. Savita gave the relationship a lesbian shades.
Sampati, a short story by Tagore was directed by Devendra Raj Ankur in his hallmark style of “theatre of short stories,” where the story stands in its own genre, without adapting to drama. The narrative structure of the story is preserved with the writer’s instructions, descriptions and included in the enactment. Staged by Sambhav, it featured old-timer Amitabh Shrivastava as the father figure. Amit Saxena was Krishana Rai who returns to the village after his graduation from Kolkata and falls in love with the village hoyden, the vivacious Mrinimayi. Without realising that despite her age she is still childlike in her mind and conception of life, he insists on marrying Mrinimayi. Despite his best efforts to make her realise her altered status, she refuses to change her ways. He leaves her in the village and returns to Kolkata. And it is this decision by her husband to leave her which is the turning point in her life; Mrinimayi grows up.
The chaotic marriage scene was neatly enacted with the rest of the cast. The play was beautifully acted and directed with plenty of humour and liveliness.
Peer Gynt was presented by Thrissur-based Oxygen Theatre Company. Both plays are directed by Deepan Shivaraman. Peer Gynt is on deathbed and requests God to give him a chance to re-do his life. The strong visual narrative is spatially improvised and is very physical in nature.
Deepan tells the story of Peer Gynt keeping in mind the contemporary situation in India which is undergoing vast changes in value systems.
Kino Kao was a brave experiment by Pabitra Rabha of Assam-based group Darpan, the Mirror, Tangla. He produced a play entirely with dwarfs. He collected 25 odd dwarfs from six districts of Assam. The idea was to sensitise the people with the physically-challenged dwarfs who are seen as oddities in society and often are the butt of laughter and ridicule.
The play showcased dwarfs as persons with normal ideas and values in life.
Polish play In The Name Of Jacub is also visually very rich and thematically powerful. It speaks about the peasant leader Jacub Szela (1787-1866) who led the rising against the gentry in Galacia in 1846, directed against manorial property and against serfdom. The director of the play Monika Strzepa specialises in critical theatre. She deconstructs the historical event in a theatre language that features cabaret, burlesque and pastiche in a blunt, cheeky and humorous manner. The current play is written by Pawel Demiriski, a radical whose work touches upon cultural and economic exclusion. He formulates extreme provocative theses about authority-citizen relationships and the mechanisms of free market economy and neo-liberal politics and policies.