Happenings’ unique international Rabindra Utsav once again united south Asian nations on a Tagorean platform. Spectators who fashionably prefer Western celebrities missed out on the marvellous dance-drama Riddhi from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Inspired by Tagore’s writings on female oppression and songs from Gitanjali, director-choreographer Harshika Rathnayake coalesced those ideas with an ancient Sinhala ritual that supplicates for childless women, guards the pregnant, and blesses newborn babies. In five acts depicting folkloric tales, she identified men as perpetrators of deceit and injustice, and represented women as strong survivors who must never submit. But it was the standard of performance that astonished: I daresay even established Indian creative dance troupes cannot easily match the uninhibited full-contact body language and beautiful collective expressivity of these 19 theatre (I emphasize, not dance) undergraduates. Rathnayake’s art design employing red and black, the colours of childbirth, also enthralled.
The University of Kabul returned with a brief biography of Rumi (born in Balkh, Afghanistan) titled under his real name, Mawlana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi. The connection with Tagore lies in mysticism, but one could trace other echoes: the soul pining for distant lands as in Dākghar, Sufi-influenced poetry, and the whirling Sama dervish dance, which concluded the play upliftingly, and which had trickled east into the typical Baul twirl with arms upraised. More unexpected were the radical contemporary resonances: dramatist Habibullah Sorosh writes that Rumi “had very strong personal and political beliefs which were not tolerated by the government … As a result of this, he left his hometown”. And on Rumi’s deep passion for his preceptor Shams: “followers could not accept his love for Shams. They threatened to kill him.” Salahuddin Samandary’s direction may have looked simple, but when we understand the tough conditions of Afghan theatre, we realize his statement.
We have seen so many stimulating interpretations of Dākghar that the straightforward Rajshahi University (Bangladesh) production gave us nothing to write home about. Director S.M. Faruque Hossaine added three songs to “communicate the thoughts of Amal”, as if Tagore’s dialogues didn’t suffice.
Rabindra Bharati University’s Theatre Repertoire (sic; they must use the correct word, Repertory) chose unusually with Sāradotsav, the first of Tagore’s season plays. Bengali theatre not being particularly eco-aware, groups ignore it. So director Debashis Roy Chowdhury checks the right nature box, and also notes that it concerns liberty and “play” in every sense. He inculcates this zest in the large cast of youth overrunning the stage, though he should have granted them freedom over all backstage inputs too, to encourage their abilities rather than assign these duties to senior pros. One must single out Subhrangsu Mukherjee’s comic acting as Laksheswar, the butt of ridicule with his pots of gold.
Another comedian, Soumyen Sengupta, took top honours as the first dacoit in Visva-Bharati’s Vālmiki Pratibhā. While it bore Sangit Bhavan’s aesthetic hallmark in dance and music, the performers’ ages appeared much higher compared to Sāradotsav, which may guarantee quality but neglects young talent that a university must nurture. The authentic Santiniketani style conflicted with director Amartya Mukhopadhyay’s requisition of strapped remote mikes, keyboards and the un-Rabindrik harmonium. Any experimentation with Rabindrasangit must have intense vision and theoretical allegiance to Tagore’s concepts of kholā galā and acoustic accompaniment. Finally, to make out Saraswati wielding her vina to prod the backdrop furiously to locate her entrance point gave a twist to divine instrumentality.
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