WITH LOVE, AP KI SAIYARA
Ekjute celebrated their 40th birthday in 2021 by handing over the baton to the next generation. Juhi Babbar Soni wrote, directed and enacted the bilingual With Love, Āp ki Saiyāra,
Reviews
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MANIKARNIKAY MANIKA | DAY AMADERO!
Mukhomukhi’s festival thoughtfully marking 75 years of group theatre unprecedentedly premiered eight new Bengali productions over one week and had an explosive start with Prachyo’s Manikarnikāy Manikā, adapted from Jean-Paul
NA TOR JANYA | PHANS
In Dwitiya Satta’s new play, Nā Tor Janya, written and directed by Suman Sengupta, Macbeth meets The Matrix on the subject of the artist coopted and corrupted by forces around
MARMSPARSH
This year the Atelier Campus Theatre Festival–13 leg in Kolkata almost never happened due to disinformation about safety concerns in this city, of all places in India! At the last
THE BELLE OF AMHERST | SIMPLY SHAKESPEARE
Kolkata saw two solo shows in English on the work of famous authors, both underscoring the need for variety in performance to engage spectators of this genre. Kathleen Mulligan, an
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DUJO KABIR | VYAKTIGAT | AI LADKI
Little Thespian’s national theatre festival, renamed Jashn-e-Azhar to memorialize Azhar Alam, featured in Hindi three renowned north Indian writers on its first three days. Vivechana Rangmandal (Jabalpur) presented Dujo Kabir
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BHORER BARANDA | TYPIST
Two-handers made quite a comeback in Bengali theatre after the pandemic owing to their comparative logistical ease of rehearsal and management. Thus, we have had Kathakriti’s Nayan Kabirer Pālā, Anya
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SHER AFGAN | HAYABADAN
Sansriti has reached a major milestone, their thirtieth anniversary. It seems just the other day that I criticized some of their early productions, but under founder-director Debesh Chattopadhyay they have
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GHARE BAIRE CHIRIYAKHANA
Ganakrishti’s recent fascination with such icons of absurdism as Beckett and Albee manifests in a wonderful new venture on Ghare Bāire Chiriyākhānā, a scrupulously faithful adaptation by Amitava Dutta of
NUR JAHAN
After Nil-darpan inaugurated Banga Natya Samhati’s celebrations of the founding of Bengali professional theatre, Dwijendra Lal Roy’s Nur Jāhān (1908) became the second play to be revived for the year-long
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AGUN | SAMPARKA
As a relatively new and small group, Baghajatin Alaap have gone from strength to strength on successive productions. Their latest, Āgun, commemorates the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971—a subject on
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AMI JAGADISH | SHIKHANDI
ECTA (New Jersey)’s winter tour of Bengal this year brought two new plays by Sudipta Bhawmik. Āmi Jagadish has a premise very unusual for Bengali theatre: inspired by J. C.