“Why waste time watching such nonsense?” a masked young man in black attire whispered into my ears as I stepped into the elevator at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity on April 16. Minutes earlier, when I entered the KCC premises, another young man asked for alms with such earnestness that I had to reach out for my purse to produce 20 rupees. All this kept working inside the viewers’ minds as they assembled to experience a show teasingly titled Commedia Dell’Arte Galore. Presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of Italy in Calcutta, the evening was a rare opportunity for a dramatic encounter of the international kind in a city increasingly shorn of such events.
Essentially the outcome of a workshop conducted by Marco Luly at the KCC, the presentation was marked by the streak of irreverence and the carnivalesque spirit that commedia dell’arte stands for. Luly, in the role of the doctor who knows everything but medicine, played the kingpin, while local participants enacted scenes from Carlo Goldoni’s trailblazing comedy, The Servant of Two Masters. It was improvised into a marriage proposal scene set in contemporary Calcutta, where crass consumerism and racial stereotypes reign supreme, and it played out a sequence from the Manasa Mangal tradition where Parvati refuses to acknowledge Manasa as Shiva’s daughter (picture, left) and, thus, a member of her extended family. As we watched, grinning all the way (and keeping our concern for political correctness under check), we wished that the KCC would present similar shows with indigenous forms like alkap and gambhira, which pulsate with the same irreverent appeal.
Italy was also the flavour of the evening in Dolls Theatre’s celebration of World Puppetry Day at Madhusudan Mancha. The hosts showcased their latest, Pinocchio, which attempted an adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s coming-of-age tale about a wooden puppet. Sudip Gupta, the director, decided to bring Gepetto, the woodcarver father of Pinocchio, on stage (played to perfection by Sabyasachi Dasgupta as his pre-recorded voice played in the background). Gupta utilised the puppet show sequence within the tale to pay tribute to the fast-dying tradition of rod puppet shows, once a rage in rural fairs across Bengal. The Blue Fairy appeared to be straight out of the book (picture, right). Such code-mixing of ideas and Gupta’s mastery in crafting Monstro, the whale, in shadows worked in favour of Pinocchio. The children, who assembled in the hundreds, enjoyed a laugh riot during the sneezing scene towards the end. Better handling of the lights and masking of the players hand-operating the puppets will elevate the show further.
The evening also featured Dui Pakhir Icchepuran, an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, “Dui Pakhi”, by two spirited youngsters, Ahana and Asmita Bhattacharya, under the banner of Not A Storyteller. This promising duo — honing their skills in storytelling, playing instruments, and handling glove-puppets — looks poised to go miles.
Innovative thinking holds the key to success in a contemporary adaptation of a tale located in the folklore tradition. Rashid Haroon, a professor at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, took a leaf out of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s “Kunjo Burir Katha” and crafted a boisterous entertainer titled Kujaburi. Recently presented at Puppetorium, Kujaburi used the technical flexibility of the string-puppet tradition of Bengal to hilarious effect. To heighten the immediacy, Haroon allowed singers and musicians to operate in full view of the audience by placing them on both sides of the proscenium. Insertion of a grandma-grandson subplot and maximum use of the catchy popular tunes of our times brought the house down throughout the hour-long performance, making it a model for similar enterprises.