Debasish Ray’s fascination with history has led him to compose biodrama on two pioneers, of Bengali printing and French painting respectively. For Aneek, he directed Āksharik, which he dramatized from Rajat Chakraborti’s novel Panchānaner Haraph, based on the virtually forgotten creator of Bangla moveable type, Panchanan Karmakar. Born into a family of metal engravers, Panchanan came to the notice of Nathaniel Halhed and Charles Wilkins, who commissioned him to craft the “punch” of individual letters of the Bangla alphabet into casting typeface for Halhed’s A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778). But the sahibs, true to type, did not credit him in print. Later, William Carey took Panchanan to his famed Serampore Mission Press, where Panchanan added many Asian scripts to their inventory, even the first Devanagari font, which Debasish should have mentioned, too.
As a publisher who still uses old-fashioned blocks, though not letterpress anymore, I thrill at the way Debasish has recreated this local hero. He casts three males (Arka Sen, Saumen Chakrabarti, Arup Ray) as Panchanan from boyhood to seniority, sometimes placing them together at the same time. The touching portrayal of Panchanan’s impoverished family does not surprise, but compared to the normally awkward presentation of foreigners in Bengali theatre, Niladri Mukherjee (Halhed), Prashanta Datta (Wilkins), Dhruba Mukherjee (Carey) and Shankar Bhattacharya (William Ward) enact the British credibly. Dhruba leads memorable live accompaniment through his own singing and hypnotic collective percussion by the metal artisans employing their hammers and chisels, and by press workers banging wooden logs. Debasish designs a set of printed saris draped vertically (why not with Bangla akshar as in, admittedly later, Shantipur tradition?) and evokes undulating river swells by simply having actors sway paper boats on strings (photo) rhythmically.
He could perfect Āksharik by correcting factual errors and pronunciation. The Careys lost one son, not two, to dysentery: Jabez lived to a ripe age. Mrs Carey’s “madness” (depicted with restraint by Tapati Bhattacharya) has been questioned as a patriarchal stereotype by James Beck in his 1992 biography of her. Halhed’s middle name was Brassey, not Brasso the metal-polish brand; the second “h” in his surname was perhaps silent, but either way, the characters should pronounce it consistently. He titled his book with the noun Bengal (see my previous paragraph), not “Bengali”. And Mrs Halhed’s maiden name was Ribaut, not Rabet. Further fodder for the imperative induction of dramaturgs in Bengali theatre.
The growing eminence of Debasish in Bengal has made him a hot property for guest-directorial stints, as at the Bharatendu Natya Academy (Lucknow) run by the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Their production of his Do Paul kā Jinā in Hindi travelled to Kolkata in May, and exposed the chinks in his armour: carelessness about historical details as in Āksharik, repetition (a proven weakness in prolific artists), and an alarming encouragement to smoke flagrantly. Besides obvious cancer hazards, the last item becomes even more reprehensible and irresponsible when practised at an institute that trains theatre’s impressionable next generation. When I expressed my strong objections to it, he said the fumes provide a great opportunity for lighting effects! My retort: do your actors drink real liquor on stage?
The play, about Paul Gauguin, relies on Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, which personified the idea of “mad” modernist genius in a protagonist modelled after Gauguin, but Debasish also borrows the device of a double story possibly from Swapna-sandhani’s Tārāy Tārāy on Van Gogh, juxtaposing an artist from the present. Apart from the recurrent bad habit of smoking, other instances of Debasish déjà-vu include a fridge centrestage, through which things happen, just like in his Pratham Rājnaitik Hatyā.
Let me turn to accuracy in research. Biographically, the bohemian Gauguin doesn’t exactly inspire. Debasish ignores the fact that he fathered many children with many teenage girls whom he exploited. Most shocking, Debasish’s rendition of Tahitian dance and song (in nonsense syllables) is racially offensive. Enough online reconstructions and YouTube videos of Polynesian performances exist to refute these scenes. Finally, back to pronunciation: the names of iconic French painters are mispronounced; Gauguin addresses Van Gogh as “Van”; and Maugham’s Blanche becomes “Blanky”. A disappointing theatrical experience, despite Debasish inculcating his laudably rigorous process in the students.
[21 July 2024]