Sudipta Bhawmik, is a well known actor, director and playwright. Having been performing in the Tri-state area since 1989, his plays in Bengali and English have won many awards in India, US and Canada. He has also acted in Mira Nair’s The Namesake.
Sudipta is also a cartoonist, illustrator and blogger. With a Ph.D, M,Tech and Tech degrees from IIT Kharagpur, India.. His recent plays Phera, Kaalsuddhi, Durghatana, BSL, Ron, Satyameva, and Taconic Parkway has received wide appreciation both from the critics as well as audiences. His plays have been published in Kolkata’s prestigious magazines like Bohurupi and SAS. His play, Satyameva has been made into a Telefilm (renamed as Satyasatta for Tara Bangla TV channel in Kolkata) by the famous actor director Chandan Sen. Sudipta has also written a screenplay Charu: Unspoken.
Neha Mahajan caught up with this prolific director to know more about his works and his recent play Banprastha.
NM: You are an IITian, engineer in semiconductors. How come theater and plays became your muse?
SB: I have been doing plays since I was in Kindergarten. Then when I went to college, there is a very active social culture, they are very active in theatre. There is a technology drama society. So we used to do about 2-3 plays per year. There were spring festivals and others too. Our professors used to encourage us . We had humanities as a subject and the English teacher used to really encourage us a lot. When I graduated, I was working in Delhi for sometime and then in Kolkata. My interest in theater had deepened and I joined the Panchamved Charyashram, a theater school founded by Saoli Mitra, her group was called Panchamvedic. I also had the privilege of training under the stalwarts like Sombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, Saoli Mitra, Mohit Chattopadhya and others. He also received training from the famous playwright and director Badal Sircar at many of his workshops.
I came to US many years back, and then the first person I didi a play with was Sakti Sengupta of the njisacf. The play Sabdo Moho Bandhne was an abstract play based on various Bengali short stories. From that time on, I have been very actively involved in plays.
NM: You have been writing plays from a very long time. What are the themes that they deal with?
SB: I was not really into serious play writing until say about 2001-2002. The thing is that in US we get very little time to do things that we want to do. There are so many commitments. The extra things that you want to do take a lot of time. I was really very involved in directing and acting in the plays that were staged in Kolkata. We used to do them here. Like plays of Badal Sircar and Rabindranath Tagore. We used to do them here. We were doing them for so many years – the main reason was nostalgia about our homeland and of the people there.
But we could not connect with them. Things are different here. Famous director Ashok Mukherjee was doing a play here in US and I was acting in it. We were talking and ended up discussing about the plays we do here and how we who reside here in India cannot connect to them. They don’t seem relevant.
He told me that you’ll have to do plays that are relevant here. That was a turning point. His words got me thinking. Since then I started writing plays that reflected out state here.
I wrote my first play Phera in 2003. I received overwhelming response. It was just my first play and people came up to me and told me that they were touched. Some people had tears in their eyes. They could so well relate with the story.
If you look at books of Jhumpa Lahiri, you could see a connection. My plays are quite in similar strain.
Phera was happening in India, backdrop wise. But it is about a boy who came from US to India but his family was not happy and wanted him to go back. They were so given in to luxuries from the money that he used to send. When it was staged for the first time at North American Bengali conference, the hall of 2500 people was full and there was pin drop silence.
Another play like Kaalshuddhi (Redemption) is about a father who was part of Naxalite movement and his grown up son one day finds out and starts questioning him. The father had a guilt in his heart of having been a traitor to his own group. Similarly Durghatna was a monologue…
To Read Sudipta’s Interview Click Here
Read Part 2 of Sudipta’s Interview
Do Visit www.monadarling.com/vibes
A Unique Social network to Connect with friends, know about events ,classifieds in your area , forums and more.Click Here to join Mona’s Vibes Now
No comments:
Post a Comment