Loknath Bandyopadhyay’s fascination with the functioning of the human mind has led him to adapt intriguing recent American stage and screen works for Bengali theatre. For the sake of information transparency, he should acknowledge his sources in the publicity material, more so since he Indianizes them quite faithfully. Ekush Shatak’s
Quite by coincidence, two novels by Howard Fast have made it to the Bengali stage simultaneously, enabling us to rediscover this American author who fell prey to McCarthy’s witchhunting in the 1950s and had to self-publish them after being blacklisted. One, Silas Timberman, on suppression of freedom of speech, was
Independence Week provides an appropriate occasion to discuss the rather uncommon phenomenon of two Bengali plays on the Father of the Nation running concurrently – with a third to come in the near future. Calcuttans will realize that it is all the more uncommon because of a certain ambivalence that
Rangapat has risen to a position of visibility among Bengali groups based upon its recent track record of mounting spectacular interpretations of original historical drama, though it also stages more contemporary tales. Its popularity has grown under the direction of Tapanjyoti Das, because viewers have realized that he guarantees a
That inexhaustible storehouse of stories, the Mahābhārata, provides more raw material for the mill of two current Bengali productions. Both of these also employ the traditional technique of Kathakata—the first as a collective, the second as a solo act. Sukhchar Pancham Repertory Theatre’s Vidur Dharmayātrā, written and directed by Maloy
