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Abhinayam Presents
ANTARYATRA & MANASI
Playwright, Direction, Performance - USHA GANGULI, with local artists
 
AUGUST 18, 2019 | 4 - 7 PM | RED CLAY THEATER, DULUTH, GEORGIA

ANTARYATRA

In “Antar Yatra”, there is a whole history of Indian womanhood played out in large enough social space covering middle class homes and  the urban working woman to the rural woman at the extreme margins as well as dramatic moments in history in the nineteenth century Bengal, Fascist Germany, and the seventeenth century Thirty Years’ War in Germany. Resistance and rebellion, critical understanding and assertion register different responses to deprivation, discrimination, and injustice.

Antaryatra, turns into a celebration of womanhood as Ganguli pays tribute to these strong women through her collage of characters. They are drawn from real life, each rooted in a distinct social space but bonded through the basic identity of being a woman, per se and a survivor at that.

Sanichari in Rudali from Mahasweta Devi's story, Himmat Mai (Bertolt Brecht's 1939 German play), Nora from Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House, Kamla from Vijay Tendulkar's play, are women fighting against adversity.

The play uses the strategy of monologue to journey through a mélange of historical characters to portray the psyche of the woman.

MANASI

With great reverence to Rabindranath Tagore, Abhinayam is going to produce a play comprising of major women characters taking from Tagore's literature with their discursive stand, philosophy, emotion and the story narrative. It is a project not only to present Tagore but also to expose some revelations about the status of modern women in our society.

The structure of this play is framed in terms of "dialog" between a student-actress and the director. Our actress is becoming Ela of Chaar Adhyay, Kumudini of Jogajog, Sudarshana and Surangana of Raja and Mrinalini of Stree'r Patra.

Director intends to construct a character through a discussion which leads to the dramatization of the underlying storyline. Eventually, characters become free to talk among themselves. In turn, the play will try to ignite the fire of logic and emotion in such a fashion that the actress and director are out of the realm of characters framed by Rabindranath and enters into the personal experiences of today's womenfolk to capture Ela, Kumudini, Mrinalini, and others. This project wants to address Tagore's ideas on feminism analyzed from the angle of complexities of our time.

As a format, this project is a new kind of theatre that clubs idea with the event, narrative with treatment, a statement with histrionics. Stagecraft must be designed to highlight the inner dimensions of Tagore's philosophy by projecting Tagore's drawings.

Abhinayam intends to present radiant theatre not to show the Godhead of Rabindranath Tagore but to explore how in the present age we can accomplish the task of translating the essence of Tagore into our theatre in a deconstructed framework of our time.

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