A short story by Rabindranath Tagore Madhyabartini (The girl in between) was staged on the fifth day of the Adi Vidrohi Drama Festival.
Directed by a renowned theatre director Bahrul Islam, the play was staged by the artists of Seagull Theatre Group, Guwahati on Friday. This play speaks about the traumas of a childless married couple in the country.
Madhyabartini is an instinctive expression of love between a man and two women. Nivaran and Harsundari is a childless couple. Somewhere over the years, love seems to have gone out of their marriage. It was then that Harsundari requests him to remarry and even finds a young maiden, Shailobala for him.
With Shailobala, Nivaran rediscovers love in marriage and so Harsundari feels betrayed, she feels alone, abandoned and depressed after her sacrifice. While Nivaran finds a new meaning, young Shailobala feels suffocated with Nivaran’s overwhelming love and ultimately dies while she was expecting with a child.
Again, after a long interval, Nivaran and Harsundari reunite, but are unable to go back to their initial relationship.
The director of the play, Bahrul Islam says, “I know nothing to explore Tagore as I read Tagore a little bit. But, I feel that if anyone read Tagore his or her perspective in the life changes a lot.” Moreover it is obvious that time keeps changing and with the changing time society, psyche of the individual also get transform, he added.
The characters, situations, conflicts, dilemma in the story Madhyabartini are still relevant in the current society. Elaborating over this he says, “I and my troupe members are theatre students. So, our play productions try to discover the complexities of the situations in the story.” On asking about staging it in Adi Vidrohi fest, he says, “Tagore’s plays are such that it can be performed in any place and adapted to any language.” Baharul says that as theatre artistes, it is their duty to entertain in times of fear and conflict.
The performances by Seagull aryists are always appreciated so as were on Friday. The perfect lighting, dialogues and the changing expresses added mood to the performance. Bahrul as Nivaran and his wife Bhagirathi as Harsundari and Kismat Bano as Shailobala grabbed the applauses of the audience at the show.