In their debut performance at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav, Bangladeshi group Swapnadal communicated an important message on violence through the help of gamcha. S Mallik reports
The recent killings at a newspaper office in France and at a school in Peshawar created ripples across the world. The two events that shook the humanity inspired the Bangladeshi theatre group Swapandal to come up with a play with a strong message. “Our objective is to make the audience realise that every act of violence or cruelty affects our lives in some way or the other. Even if we are living in completely different countries, we are equally affected by the acts of terrorism,” said Zahid Repon, director of the play Trishangha Shatabdee, that was recently staged during the ongoing Bharat Rang Mahotsav.
The play traced the large scale destruction caused by the atom bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and spoke about the recent terror attack in France. There were certain aspects of the play that kept the audience engaged throughout. Use of props like gamcha ensured that the audience related to the story. Repon said, “The gamcha is something that we all relate to. It was a joint decision to use only those things which are quintessentially ours.” From the airplane to the waterbodies and from the explosion to the landscape, everything was depicted through the gamcha.
To make this possible, all 15 actors were on stage throughout, manoeuvring every movement of the cloth to create perfect visual imagery. “We used as many as 120 gamchas,” said Repon. Not only the visuals, even costumes of the performers had the gamcha — be it in the Western uniform of the General or simple garments of the common man. And the music was the sound created by the actors. The sound of dropping of the bomb, the wind rushing over a barren land and the rippling of the water — every sound was by the actors from different corners of the stage.
To get into the skin of the character was difficult for actors. “We needed to look real in the play and it was challenging because we had neither seen suffering from close quarters nor did we ever go through extreme pain,” shared Shishir Sikdar, a team member. They did a lot of fieldwork to understand the subject. The actors visited hospital ICUs and tried to come to terms with the pain that near and dear ones go through at the time of trauma.
Trishangha Shatabdee, Repon mentioned, was an open scripted play. It started with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Mumbai blasts, the conditions in Gaza and Palestine were added in recent years. “We keep adding events to our narrative as and when they happen and that is why we have no set script for this play. Even if something comes in the news half an hour before our performance, we immediately add it to the play,” said actor Tanvir Shake and added that adding matter to the play makes it relevant to all times.
For Swapnadal, it was their debut at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav but they are a known and respected group back home with over 35 productions under their belt. Although they dealt with the serious subject of terrorism around the world, the production was not preachy.