How does one perform madness? Distort the “normal”, cultivate an aberration, contort and grimace? Or make no change from a “stable” characterization, but let the words do the exposing? Adaptations […]
DIARY OF A MADMAN | JERA Read More »
Bengali theatre has developed a profound nostalgia for its rural forefathers – at once desirable to acquaint the new generation with its history, and disagreeable for the uncritical romanticism with
MAYA MRIDANGA | SAODAGARER NAUKA Read More »
Only three of nearly thirty productions in Nandikar’s National Theatre Festival came from outside Bengal, excluding Shekhar Sen’s Kabir (which has already toured here), and caused by regrettably depleted funding.
PEBET | ACROSS THE SEA | THE LION KING | TUMHARA VINCENT Read More »
The departure of Swatilekha Sengupta comes as a major loss to Bengali theatre. This is not the stale cliché found in garden-variety wreaths, which focused exclusively on her acting, primarily
SWATILEKHA SENGUPTA (1950-2021) Read More »
After felicitating Arun Mukherjee, Satish Alekar and Ratan Thiyam this time, Nandikar’s Ninth National Theatre Festival commenced at the Academy of Fine Arts on December 5 with Pagla Ghoda in
Thanks to the organizational abilities of Nandipat, the fortnight-long Padma-Ganga Utsav sponsored by Charms Mini Kings brought to the western edge of the delta a broad cross-section of Bangladeshi theatre,
BHUT | RAKSHUSI | SAT GHATER KANAKARI | IRSHA Read More »
Nandikar’s National Theatre Festival became a major cultural victim of the sad events in the second week of December—a pity and a great irony, for it has prided itself in
If it could apply to the materialistic rat race of American society twenty years ago, why not the yuppy sector of India today? Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue,
PRISONER OF MALABAR HILL Read More »
Theatre Art of Bangalore is among the very few English-language theatre groups in India who care about doing serious plays. Not just that, their skilled abilities permit them to take
For Chetana to pick Brecht’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Academy of Fine Arts, January 5) is at once both right and wrong. If translator-director Suman Mukherjee intends to convey Shakespeare,
The Sangit Kala Mandir Festival of plays by Ank proved, if nothing else, that this Bombay group led by Dinesh Thakur has a very diverse range of dramatic interests as
TUGHLAQ | KACHHUWA KHARGOSH | KANYADAN Read More »
The latest production of Class Theatre, Bārti Dām Deba Nā (Sisir Mancha, January 20), presents Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay! in a fairly straightforward Bengali translation by Sukumar Das,
