Shombhu Mitra not only found a completely new sensibility in Tagore's works but also introduced some of the finest renderings of foreign plays, says Utpal K Banerjee
The political turmoil in the pre-Independence India, which touched both non-violent (Quit-India movement of Mahatma Gandhi) and violent (Naval Mutiny in Mumbai docks) climax in the 1940s, also reached a remarkable cultural upsurge in those years. Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) — with its amalgam of noted theatre, music, dance and visual artistes — was formed in 1943 and quickly proliferated with their stirring productions all over the land. Shombhu Mitra (1915-1997) was a product of this period, whose own — and his wife Tripti Mitra’s — talents could not be contained within the seemingly leftist straitjacket of IPTA, leading them to found Bohurupee in 1948 with the dawn of freedom.
Bohurupee and the Mitras were synonymous for many, many years, giving Bengal and India some of their finest products of the theatrical and elocutionary arts: mainly in four directions. One, they generated a completely new sensibility in Tagore’s plays — both popularly staged and ignored as unstageable — like Char Adhyay (Four Chapters), Rakta Karabi (Red Oleanders), Visarjan (Sacrifice), Raja (King of the Dark Chamber) and Dakghar (Post Office). Two, they ushered in new-wave realism in their social plays like Ulu Khagra (Insignificant Persons), Chhenda Tar (Torn Cords), Kanchan Ranga (Gilded Game) and others.
Three, they introduced some of the finest renderings of foreign plays — spanning centuries and millennia — like Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Enemy of the People, and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Finally, they brought in nouvelle-vague playwrights, like Badal Sircar with Baki Itihas (Remainder of History) and Pagla Ghoda (Untamed Horse) and Vijay Tendulkar with Chope, Adalat Chochhe (Silence, Court is in Session) to a receptive viewership. Shombhu Mitra’s versatility, superior stagecraft (with Khaled Choudhury), skilled lighting (with Tapas Sen), superb teamwork and, above all, a hypnotic voice, raised him to the level of an icon in his own life-time.
Salute to You, O the Creative Genius, presented recently by Impresario India, was a collage on Mitra’s colourful life on his 99th birthday. The multi-hued collaboration among the artistes from the capital and Bohurupee from Kolkata was set off by recollections of the former director of NSD, Kirti Jain, about her many encounters with Mitra and the latter’s wide-ranging interests that extended to the heavens and the stars. The Delhi group began with Mitra’s many associations with this city and his unforgettable recitation of Madhu Banshir Gali (The lane of Madhu the Pied-piper), penned by the Delhi-poet, Jyotirindra Moitra. Excerpts from two consummate play-readings captured the audience-attention: from Tagore’s Post Office and Mitra’s Kanchan Ranga. Both were exercises in wish-fulfillment foray: the former in the sick child’s imaginary travels with the make-believe Fakir and the latter with the status-enhancement of the village-bumpkin with a sudden lottery-win: both made memorable by Mitra.
The Bohurupee-segment began with group-dance: Come, liberate us…, of Mitra’s IPTA period. This was followed by partial enactments of the Theatre of Darkness: from Sophocles’ Oedipur Rex, with the King inflicting blindness on self as retribution for his horrendous incest, and from Tagore’s Raja, with the beauteous queen imploring the King to come out of her darkness of ignorance: to reveal himself in a spiritual radiance. Bohurupee’s additional input was another excerpt from Tagore, Red Oleanders, interspersed with lively solo songs and energetic folk-dances, besides many voice-recordings of Mitra and a lively narrative: with captivating still images.
The narrator, Sukriti lahori, aptly summed up the spirit of the approaching birth-centenary, “There has been a generational gap between Shmbhu-da and ourselves. After his legendary leadership was gone, the group was nurtured by Kumar Roy, Tarapada Mukherjee and others. Ours is a new generation: trying to hold aloft the exemplary flag and the journey remains decidedly on…”