The problem that one faces while trying to write about Naye Natua’s latest production, Moimonsingha Gitika, is a bit bizarre. This is due to the fact that though billed as a team production, it actually emerges as a solo performance. The production booklet has it that Goutam Halder is in charge of the departments of dramatization, music, choreography, set and direction. The booklet also gives out, in relatively large fonts, that Goutam also acts (the only other actor who is considered worthy of big fonts is Dyuti Ghosh Halder who is also the costume designer). Moving away from the booklet, when we come to the performance itself, what we find is Goutam, Goutam and only Goutam. Not that others do not appear on stage, but so pale is their presence beside Goutam’s, that even as one watches the performance one cannot help wondering whether or not Goutam was attempting another Meghnadbadh Kavya here. The hapless reviewer is caught trying to figure out the peculiar puzzle of a group performance that turns out to be a solo show.
বিজয় তেন্দুলকার সখারাম বাইন্ডার-এ প্রশ্ন তোলেন ভারতবর্ষের সমাজবদ্ধ জীবন যাপনের অন্ধকার দিককে আক্রমণ করে : https://t.co/yFj63rvd4p pic.twitter.com/wpgWBZqoJ2
— kaahon (@kaahonwall) May 11, 2017
The review can, however, start at a point even before the beginning of the show, when the audience is queued up to gain entry into the auditorium. This is when Goutam and a few others come out in full stage costume and make-up. Some carry lighted incense sticks, others cane baskets, and they begin to very politely welcome the audience, handing them ritually sanctified muri and batasha. Goutam, as chief of group and narratorial singer, sets about, with folded hands, to invite people in and thanking them for showing up. Some among the audience quickly realize that the performance has already begun. Others, not really clued in, try small talking and clicking selfies with the star of the stage who has descended to ground level. Once inside the theatre, when people are finding their seats and when on the stage can be seen a village scene, Goutam continues with his welcome act, now amidst the audience. But an interruption happens – a female fan decides that she must click one photograph with the star. In the time that Goutam takes to diffuse the very determined lady, we can take stock of the problems of presenting old, rural folk forms in the city as well as those of trying to create an ambience for such presentations.
The Kolkata of 2017 is unattainably distant and alienated from the geographical, socio-economic and cultural contexts that gave birth to Moimonsingha Gitika. There might remain in the memories of some a hazy shape of the long-lost time and place, many do not even have that, but none amongst us has in the living practice of our lives any trace of that mode of life. Thus, in spite of the likes of Goutam wishing it, we fail to become that audience of the song-performance who knows that the religious ceremonies, the sacred offerings, the welcoming are all pre-show meaningful rituals connected to the main performance. Thus, even as the prasad surprises us, we bank upon our city savviness to quickly recover and take selfies, request for photos and make small talk. Those of us who understand what is happening, stand awkwardly with a sheepish grin on our faces because we fail to participate in the ritual. With audience and performer not equally present within it, the ritual itself becomes meaningless, lifeless. However, it is not just the audience who is the problem when rural folk performance is attempted. The visual imagery that Goutam and Dyuti create (and here I am thinking mainly of light and costume) draws upon the picture of the village of our imaginations, where even poverty is designer one. It is quite evident that the many-hued dazzle of light and costume design has been driven by the idea that the audience – nurtured on heavy doses of colour in every frame of commercially designed cinematic song and dance routines – need to be constantly provided with visual pleasure.
The proscenium too, given its architectural design, becomes a hindrance in the case of Moimonsingha Gitika because it disjoins the performers from the audience. It must be borne in mind that in rural areas similar song-heavy performances would take place in locations that allowed close proximity between audience and performer. Goutam remains on-stage for approximately twenty or so minutes of the roughly two-hour long production. The rest of the time he remains with the audience, strutting the aisles, trying his best to bridge the disjoint. But that does not happen; instead, a larger problem crops up.Goutam becomes separated from the rest of the actors and this is the point which marks the beginning of a group performance transforming into a solo one. The production seems split down the middle not only because of this spatial disconnect (Goutam off-stage and the others on-stage) but also because of a marked difference in the quality of performance. Dyuti as Mahua and Parthib Roy as Noder Chand try long and hard. But whenever Dyuti is required to divert part of her attention from singing to other aspects of her acting, her singing begins to be heavily inflected by the pronunciation pattern of the city. Can Parthib not sing at all? If that is the case, why cast him at all in this song laden production? In the limited opportunity that he gets as Sadhu, Santanu Ghosh stamps his presence as a singer-actor of quality. The contemporary urban rhythm and beat of Sadhu’s song sung by him is quite amazing and it draws attention to the fact that the production as a whole does not exploit all the possibilities of experiment in terms of its music. Many a times the choric characters fail at synchronisation of their dance movements. At times, when they are required to be in movement together as a group, they falter. It has already been mentioned that the others appear pale next to Goutam; the others are to be blamed only partly, because this results mostly due to Goutam’s unparalleled skills.
Goutam has honed his skills, founded upon raw talent and years of dedicated practice, to such a level of excellence – be it in singing or dancing or acting – that there is hardly anybody in Bengali theatre today to perform in resonance with him. If we are to concentrate just on his singing, this being a song-heavy show, it has to be said that his singing can justifiably cause heartburn for many professional singers. He renders song after song with enviable perfection even while running up and down the length and breadth of the auditorium and the stage. The manner in which he extracts the essence of each song by paying unfailing attention to words, tune, tempo, beat, rhythm and feel, is unforgettable. He has sung the songs of the narrator, he has sung Noder Chand’s songs, he has essayed the role of Hoomra the nomad (by bringing to his voice a peculiar grating harshness) – he looms large over Moimonsingha Gitika. His supreme abilities elevate him to great heights as a performer even as they, on the one hand, make him somewhat of an unaffiliated, isolated actor and, on the other, allow questions to be raised about how theatre is to be practised as an art form. Is theatre, be it group theatre or in any other form, to be performed individually, say in the manner writing poetry is necessarily an individual act? Though the audience return from the production of Naye Natua’s Moimonsingha Gitika enchanted by Goutam’s magic, theatre is defeated here. Even as we unreservedly salute Goutam, we cannot but be pained at this unwarranted helplessness of theatre.
Dipankar Sen
