In 1984, working in a theater company in then West Berlin and watching Schiller, Schaubhune, Berliner Ensemble...I came to the understanding that doing theater for a living in Calcutta was not possible for me. Theater was not my career. I had left my job for the theater, acted in just 3 films, and now was slogging away in a cold city trying to learn the great craft for what? The realization was so terrible that I took a short leave to Munich trying to figure out what I would do? In a very pretty Munich, comforted by the very warm and loving house of Tankred Dorst, the renowned German playwright, I cried a lot. It was in Munich as I hung around with filmmaker Reinhard Hauff, watched the shooting of Volker Schlundorf, Alexander Kluge, Von Trotta...watching the DVDs of new German cinema, that it dawned that I should go back and try my luck in cinema seriously. If not as an actor then perhaps as maker...I confided to Tankred who himself had made films. He took me over to Peter Zadek who made some strange thing he called Biriyani and told that; You dont chose theater, theater chooses you... However, I returned to Calcutta, joined an advertising agency and finally sang my songs and made my films... Now that I have become whatever I have become, I feel its imperative to give back to theater from where I started dreaming. So 2 years ago I produced Brechts Galileo, keeping in mind what Tankred had told me; You are an actor Anjan, never forget that. I produced the play myself. I now have the capacity to fund my own theater if not my films. Those who joined me felt that we should continue it as an yearly exercise to keep ourselves creatively alert. Last year we planned Antigone but could not produce because of lack of the right performers. Not good performers but the right ones. In our society its very difficult to get a professional actor to give totally and utterly to the medium. There are but they have their own troupes. However, this year, a dear friend Rajorshi Dey, a corporate executive who played a small part in my Galileo gave me some confidence and literally pushed me into the arena again. He booked the hall with his own money and said, lets go... So I am back with my own text Abani Opera, trying to pay my dues to this great medium. As I produce, I look back at those crazy time when I was wholeheartedly supported by Chanda Dutt, Shekhar Das, Biplab Dasgupta and many others, who willingly acted in my productions of Sartre, Brecht or Genet...and many others who are now mostly into cinema, TV or retired...But those days were magical, filled with fights, arguments and love. And above all the guts to experiment, do the abnormal. Compared to my theater activity (Open Theater was the name of our troupe), the bulk of my cinema are far less experimental. Thank you for liking them, but they actually do not represent what I truly am perhaps. Yes, I am proud of some work like Bow Barracks, Bong Connection, Madly Bengali or Dutta Vs Dutta...I did try to break new grounds...but thats about it. I am not trying to be modest, just self critical. I also know that you cannot totally experiment with others money so I am not ashamed of the quality I produced. But live performance is something far more intellectually stimulating because here you are not answerable to a financier. Abani Opera is an extension of that long inner journey of mine in all the medium I came in contact with. Here it really does not matter who is acting and whether he or she is a pro. The raw energy matters. In Europe they bring out huge directors notebooks which you get to buy at the performance. We do not have the history neither the practice of reading extensive notes before or after performances, that is why these long posts. If you read and come you perhaps will get a better perspective to the play. A clearer understanding why certain things are happening. Im not talking about the text of Abani Opera but the production. The form. Very often we underestimate the structure or form of a production and are only looking at stories, plots, acting...It does not work for me. A theater space or a screen is not essentially a place to tell stories. In 2014, its hightime we did away with that. Shakespeare can be taught in schools, but watching it gives a whole unique perspective. Most of the time our storytelling legacy is doing what Charles Lamb did.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:20:18 +0000