Having been around for 25 years, Swapnasandhani has created for itself such a place in the world of Bengali theatre that when it attempts to do a version of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage one begins to nurse certain expectations. The chief expectation is that Swapnasandhani will present Brecht in a revised form, since in 2017 revisionist readings of texts is the norm. But there is reason to be apprehensive too, because though Mother Courage is generally considered Brecht’s best work, the play is notoriously challenging to stage, as a glance through the global history of the play’s productions will confirm. However, the production that Swapnasandhani has presented under the title Nirbhaya, to a considerable extent, fulfills the expectation and belies the apprehension.
The play written by Ratan Kumar Das is part translation, part adaptation as much of the original is retained alongside the inclusion of new elements. The most striking and significant innovation has to be the introduction of Brecht (Koushik Sen) and his companion Ruth Berlau (Debanjali Das) as characters within the play. Apart from the alienation effect this produces, the play gains a postmodern self-reflexivity and an opportunity to scrutinize Brecht as a historical figure. The scrutiny does take place to some degree because Koushik and Debanjali both as Brecht and Ruth and as critical commentators discuss Brecht and make keen observations about him. Brecht’s presenting himself, in 1947, to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and then running away from America the very next day is questioned. It is almost as if the line separating life from art is erased so that Brecht’s survival strategy gets identified with the play’s protagonist Nirbhaya’s many maneuvers involving wile, cunning and deceit in order to survive. But not taking advantage of Ruth’s textual presence to interrogatethrough performance, from a feminist standpoint, the problematic issue of women in Brecht’s works and life (something that has been extensively researched in academia) is letting a golden opportunity go waste. Nirbhaya also departs from the original in this that Kashmir becomes the locale of the action. However, the figure of Nirbhaya looms so large upon the play that Kashmir and its problems remain largely buried, barring in a reference or two. And the war is not specifically the one being fought in Kashmir but can be seen as any war being fought in any corner of the world.
As director, Koushik Sen has deliberately employed songs, multimedia projections, large pictures of Brecht and Ruth mounted on frames with wheels, a famous quote from another of Brecht’s plays in order to variouslycreate the effect of alienation and make the performance approximate the Brechtian notion of epic theatre. That he has succeeded considerably can be gauged from the manner in which the audience received the play. Even the most attentive members of the audience did not quite get emotionally attached to the characters on stage; in fact, they were prevented from doing so by the director. The stage design (Sanchayan Ghosh) and fabrication (Madan Sharma and Bikash Das) deserve special mention – Nirbhaya’s laden wagon that covers much of the stage space comes to symbolize through its large size and lumbering motion both life and the pain of living. Sudip Sanyal’s light (operated by Sumit Chakraborty), Gautam Ghosh’s music (operated by Jayanta Pal), SaborniDas’ costume (tailored by Md. Zakir Hussain) and Md. Ali’s make-up (assisted by Shekhar Adhikari and Bhulu Wahid) have combined well to serve the script’s demands.
Those who have essayed roles with relatively less onstage time and speech need to be more responsible performers. In group scenes, one or two actors could be seen being out of sync with the rest – this not only makes for unpleasant viewing, it also detracts from the visual impact of the entire scene. In Aleef’s arrest scene, one of his arrestors was so unmindful of the action around him that Aleef had to practically have himself arrested. The actors who merit special mention are Ashok Ghosh (Cook), Nabonita Basu Majumder (Imon) and Soumyo Majumder (Priest). They have all projected a specific trait of their characters with extra emphasis (for example, the crude cynicism of the Cook or the gross physicality of Imon), a strategy that works well in Brechtian plays. Monalisa Pal had a big ask in portraying Katu. She had not only to express a mute yet extremely sensitive young girl, but trace the trajectory of her attaining maturity through sexual awakening and becoming at the close of the play a larger than life figure by sacrificing her life to save that of many others’. It cannot be said that Monalisa managed to deliver on all counts, though her remaining fixedly embedded in her character throughout the play is praiseworthy. Debanjali was fluent as Ruth, as were Shankar Malakar, Ali AkramParvez and Rabindranath Jana (as Aleef, China and General respectively). Nothing very novel can be said about Koushik Sen’s histrionic abilities; he has portrayed Brecht minimally, just as a master artist uses a few strokes of his brush to paint a picture. Though he has not done much, Koushik has rooted his minimalism in the strong foundation of his experience of decades and his natural flair for acting. But if anyone has carried the play on her shoulders, it is Reshmi Sen as Nirbhaya. Reshmi has allowed the complex, multi-layered character of Nirbhaya to seep into both her mind and body, so that Nirbhaya as audacious businesswoman or anxious mother or manipulator of males are all carefully made to come to life. Reshmi has presented an unforgettable Nirbhaya/Mother Courage by modulating the pace and manner of her gait, by skillfully using moments of silence alongside quickly delivered repartees, by creating the illusion of reacting in a given moment to her co-actors’ words. There is always the fear that this character, in the end, will be elevated, out of love for her, to the status of some sort of a tragic heroine, thereby nullifying the whole of Brecht’s politics. It is commendable that the director has not taken Reshmi along that path. Thus at the end when Nirbhaya pays for her daughter’s funeral and then, as if remembering herself, takes back part of the money for herself and begins once more to pull her wagon, what we have is an ordinary human being forged by Brecht’s imagination. She is no hero, but a thoroughly defeated human being who has failed to profit out of war and yet will not and indeed cannot, stop.
I have an issue with the title, Nirbhaya. The issue is that the play, beyond evoking through the name Nirbhaya the memory of a traumatic event, does not include within its ambit anything of that incident, in spite of the opportunities present. Whether we want it or not, the name Nirbhaya has come to signify a war that women in our country are incessantly fighting. It is incumbent upon a text using this name to go beyond hollow signaling and thoroughly enter the warzone, something which this play has not done.
