23.07.2017 saw two one-act plays, Udorniti and Hostogoto performed by Sangharam Hatibagan at Tripti Mitra Sabhaghar. Those in the know of things will deduce from the information provided that the plays were not proscenium performances and that some forty odd spectators sufficed to fill up the venue. The Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek is the writer of both plays, translated cerebrally and pertinently by Pratik Dutta. The translation scores by being not mere transliteration, but by successfully positing cultural equivalence. In other words, Dutta has been able to do etymological justice to the word ‘translate’ (Latin – to carry across) by seamlessly bringing the Polish plays into Bengali. However, Pratik has translated his texts not from Polish, but from the English translations of the texts. Every translation is essentially an act of reading, and though Pratik has done a reading of a reading, the name of the English translator remained unacknowledged. I hope Sangharam will rectify this omission in future.
Kaahon Theatre Review
BUKJHIM EK BHALOBASHA – A NOVEL ENACTED
Read more : https://t.co/vsNnhOEQVK#bengalitheatre |#kaahontheatrereview pic.twitter.com/uDc4PXvKV2— kaahon (@kaahonwall) July 15, 2017
In the limited scope of this piece, it is impossible to discuss Mrozek’s works done in various media or even enumerate his activities. Keeping just the two one-act plays under discussion in mind, one can say that Mrozek was particularly concerned with the strategies of constructing political power, the skewed power equation between the state and the individual, the issue of existence and limit of the freedom of the individual. His use of dark humour to critically analyze these issues will inevitably put us in mind of other prominent East European authors such as Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera. Both Udorniti and Hostogoto are political allegories, blending expressionist and absurdist techniques. In the first play we have three extremely civilized individuals who, after having thoroughly sucked dry their political and cultural traditions thereby rendering the traditions quite useless, regress to a state of primitive cannibalism, but maintaining all the while the guise of civilized behaviour. Fat, Medium and Skinny float on a raft on a nameless sea after an unspecified disaster. They find through discussion a solution to the terrible crisis of lack of food – it is decided that Fat and Medium will eat Skinny, with his approval. As Medium always aspires to the state of being Fat and as Fat finds himself more aligned to Medium than Skinny, the coalition between Fat and Medium is easily forged. What takes some time is to get Skinny agree to become food. Udorniti casts an intense, pitiless light upon the dead cultural traditions, upon the injustice ingrained in a class-ridden society and upon modern democratic structures that not only fail to do away with injustices but actually makes it possible to perpetuate the sacrifice of the disempowered for the consumption of the powerful. Hostogoto, on the other hand, has individual freedom as its theme and presents two characters who consider themselves free in their own ways. One is certain that he is free because he has the freedom of not doing anything, of not taking any stance at all, ever. The other believes his political activism and definite ideological standpoint make him free. Both find themselves trapped in a small room, into which space the state invades from time to time in the shape of a gigantic Hand. The Hand strips the two of their clothes, leaving them denuded in every sense – in terms of their thoughts, ideology, beliefs and most importantly, their freedom. At the close of the play another Hand pulls them away and the deep red tint of the Hand clearly indicates that the same horrible death awaits both status-quoist and revolutionary. The reason for going into the content of both plays so elaborately is to suggest that living in today’s world and not finding some resonance with the plays’ content is either difficult or dangerous. Sangharam Hatibagan deserves to be applauded for practicing political theatre, without trying to be coy or less than candid about it.
The limited space offered by Tripti Mitra Sabhaghar is more suited to Hostogoto (directed by Madhurima Goswami) more than it is to Udorniti (directed by Anirban Bhattacharya). The proscenium could have worked fine for Udorniti, given its design of set, lights, background score and the performance style. There was a real need for some sort of a platform-like prop to indicate the raft, which would have then better conveyed the connotation of crisis-laden isolation of the characters. The frayed, tattered portraits of Satyajit Ray, Rabindranath Thakur and Che Guevara used as indicators of a deadened, meaningless intellectual tradition remain, for most of the time, as backdrops, not thoroughly integrated with the performance. Hostogoto, however, has been constructed in such a way that it would be difficult to perform in a large space. Right at the beginning of the play, the two characters get trapped in a room with no possibility of escape. The conference room (Tripti Mitra Sabhaghar) with its black walls become a prison, a black box of sorts. The intimate space of the room draws the audience, sitting in close proximity to the actors, within the performed text – trapped in the same enclosed space the audience too, like the characters, become quite anxious about their freedom or the lack of it. Sangharam deservedly earns my praise for the very necessary political act of stoking this unsettling anxiety among the audience who are generally encouraged to consume dramatic texts while remaining safely installed in a zone of comfort.
That the actors who perform in the two plays have gone through rigorous, disciplined training and practice is abundantly evident. In fact, of the active theatre groups in Kolkata, Sangharam Hatibagan has fashioned such a distinctive identity for itself that it is assumed that their actors will turn in polished performances. In Udorniti Kripabindu Chowdhury (Fat), Artira Pratim Biswas (Medium), Suraj Biswas (Skinny) and Sourav Pal (Postman, Servant) and in Hostogoto Tathagata Chowdhury (Activist) and Prasenjit Bardhan (Status-quoist) have all presented extremely gripping performances. Kripabindu has performed the eminence of his character through his measured, stately movements and considered speech style. Aritra has performed the search for security of his character through his aggressive fretting. From a certain loudness in speech and behavior to a gradual diminishing, Suraj has performed his character’s reconciliation with his unfortunate destiny. Sourav, in his two brief appearances, has commendably distinguished the two characters in terms of speech pattern and bodily gestures. Prasenjit Bardhan’s work deserves special mention. Using the proximity to the audience to his advantage, Bardhan has studded his performance with a range of small actions with his eyes, facial expressions, fingers and feet; this would not work on a big stage, but is actually a demand of an intimate space. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Bardhan has practically taken a master class on an actor’s use of her acting space. Does the text endorse the element of satiric ridicule that Tathagata Chowdhury has inserted in his interpretation of the Activist’s character?
By performing plays for small groups of audience and that too unremittingly dark plays, Sangharam Hatibagan has stepped outside the standard logic of the political economics of contemporary Bengali theatre practice. At the time of writing this piece, it is not known when and where these twin plays will be performed next. It has almost become a responsibility as audience to stand with and for these plays, wherever and whenever these are performed again.
Dipankar Sen
