When our traditional forms hardly get called to the city anymore, one rejoices at initiatives like the Utsav held by the Crafts Council of West Bengal, which showcased artisans and
By now we should have had a Bengali version of Ajit Dalvi’s Marathi Gandhi viruddh Gandhi, especially since the original production directed by Chandrakant Kulkarni came here in 1997, and
While that modern classic, Death of a Salesman, continues returning in Bengali incarnations owing to its growing relevance, Arthur Miller’s other plays have also seen revivals lately. A View from
The relative paucity of new Bengali playtexts leads many groups to dramatize short stories. Swapnamoy Chakraborty’s Chakshudān receives this treatment from Debasish Mukhopadhyay for South Kolkata Shrine. Set in Jharkhand,
My 50-year-old connection with The Red Curtain has led me to associate their productions with scrupulous rigour, a combination of artistic dedication and disciplined teamwork that provided a model for
Rejecting the self-fanfare that has become the norm for us Indians, Padatik have not publicized the impressive achievement of reaching their golden anniversary this year. Fittingly instead, they have launched
Natya Samhati’s celebration of the sesquicentennial of Bengali professional theatre moved into the second quarter of the 20th century with two romantic-comedy hits from the 1920s and 1930s. They memorialized
Two directors have revived their old dramatizations from Bengali fiction due to renewed political relevance. Arun Mukherjee first took up Manik Bandyopadhyay’s short story “Hārāner Nāt-jāmāi”, on the Tebhaga Movement,
Little Thespian’s last two productions place wronged wives centrestage. In Visarjan, dramatized by Uma Jhunjhunwala from Premchand’s story “Suhāg kā Shav”, Subhadra encourages her husband to accept a scholarship to
It is quite creditable for a young group like Santoshpur Anuchintan to organize a three-day national Hindi theatre festival, named Hriday Manch, even though they had help from the co-hosts,
The pandemic led to much artistic soul-searching, especially in forms like theatre dependent on collective social interaction. Forced to isolate, some dramatists and directors addressed the unprecedented situation in new
The metatheatrical genius of Pirandello has attracted Bengali groups recently: I can count half a dozen productions of his life and work currently running in Kolkata (just search for him
