A play about a bereaved family and a complex web of emotions that follow a loss set off the Kolkata run-up to the sixth edition of Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF).
SAF, one of the most extensive multi-disciplinary arts endeavours in the South Asian region, will be held across 16 venues in Panaji, Goa, from December 15 to 23.
In the run-up to SAF, the Serendipity Arts Foundation has come up with Beyond Serendipity — an endeavour to take previously held performances from the festival to different cities.
Actor, director and writer Niketan Sharma
Photo-Copy, directed by Niketan Sharma, was staged at Rangakarmee Studio Theatre and the Kolkata Centre for Creativity on September 16 and 17 as part of the initiative.
The play revolves around how a family deals with the grief of a father. Featuring Niketan Sharma as the elder brother, Abhishek Chauhan as the younger brother, Chakori Dwivedi as the sister and Rasika Agashe as the mother, the play tries to define the emotions that accompany the death of a family member and how death as a subject is often not dealt with or talked about in Indian families.
The eldest sibling, Satyaprakash, is a struggling actor living in Mumbai who comes back home on his father’s 15th death anniversary. As he realises that he is slowly losing memories of his father, he grapples with his own identity and his family’s expectations from him.
Actors Rasika Agashe as the mother and Abhishek Chauhan as the brother in a scene from the play
The play is a complex narrative where each individual grapples with the emptiness in their lives left by death and ultimately reconciles themselves to the truth of their existence without the presence of a father and a husband.
“This is the second play that I wrote. I was trying to write a solo piece but no ideas came to me about how to go about it. There were some things that were bothering me personally and the way I have experienced loss and grief around me inspired me to write this play. The idea of the play originated from within me but the society and the people around me had an impact on how I wrote the play as well because loss is universal. I think there needs to be more discussion about how loss is dealt with by families. This is the first time that we are performing the play outside Mumbai and Goa and I feel like the people of Kolkata have received the play very differently. With every scene, we felt that the audience accepted the play very well. Since we are performing live there is always an exchange of energy between the audience and the actors on the stage and we felt that energy,” said Niketan Sharma the writer, director and actor of the play.
The siblings in the play
SAF will also feature educational initiatives, workshops, special projects and institutional partnerships. The art section of the festival will be curated by artists such as Sandeep Kumar Sangaru and Anjana Somany. Bickram Ghosh and Ricky Kej will be bringing the music segment to life by curating a medley of concerts spanning across diverse genres. Geeta Chandran and Mayuri Upadhya will be creating a captivating fusion of classical, experimental and contemporary dance performances while the creative direction of the Visual Arts domain is entrusted to Veeranganakumari Solanki and Vidya Shivadas.