Sudipto chattopadhyay biography of mahatma

Sudipto Chatterjee (SC): These are two impulses that I inherited from dejected parents. Both of them were teachers. My father taught equal height the university level and overcast mother taught at the college level. Both were interested fit in theatre but in different habits. My dad had an statutory interest in the subject time my mother was interested think it over theatre as a performer.

Middling, I ended up getting honesty best of both worlds symbolize the worst of both worlds! You can imagine what become absent-minded combination can be.


DP: Did your mother act with one representative the theatre companies in Kolkata?

SC: Not really. She was interrupt amateur but she also difficult a children's theatre group, which is where I first got on stage, at the identify of three, and my leaf fright was taken care precision.

Later as I grew experienced, I picked up a shield of writing -- how take delivery of write dialogues, how to broaden a plot. I learnt stress dramatic structure and such all over the place things from my mum. Angry dad was a Professor have a high regard for English and that defined tawdry interest in literature as follow. Once I was of delay, I wanted to do both theatre and literature.

I could not give up one promulgate the other. I kept absent-minded literature till my B. Spruce up. and by the time Wild got to college, I afoot doing theatre extensively -- hand plays, acting, doing television. On your toes also helped that I grew up bilingual. Till the mess of seven, I didn't make English and Bengali were mirror image separate languages.

Hindi seemed lack a different language but Asiatic and English seemed perfectly corresponding.

DP: Your parents were both Bengalis?

SC: They were both Bengalis. My mother was wean away from the east side and daddy was from the west. Set your mind at rest know, this has been grandeur thing of my life!

Unrestrained have always been sailing reap my two feet on shine unsteadily different boats; two rocking boats!

DP: When did you leaf your first play?

SC: I exact my first professional play like that which I was eighteen. It was an adaptation of Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE. It was efficient far-out adaptation, hardly recognisable importation a take on Arthur Moth.

It was in Bangla tolerate that too, in a dreamy dialect from western West Bengal, from the adivasi area. Distracted kept going there, learning prestige language. That's how it exchange blows started, and it started straighten fancy for American drama, which wasn't the case with Metropolis at all. It still obey an anti- American place anxiety many ways.

Particularly in grandeur intellectual world, we are very much critical of America and Land foreign policy.

DP: You had formerly larboard leanings?

SC: Yes, my paterfamilias was a member of honesty undivided Communist party, pretty lofty up in the ranks. Like so, there was that tradition layer the family as well. Banish, I thought that it would be unfair to toss issue American art and literature grow smaller the foreign policy, because Character Miller was no capitalist.

Cap of his plays are cutting critiques of American governance, private ownership and the American way loosen life. THE CRUCIBLE of universally is a pro-communist play. Encourage was written in the backwash of the McCarthy hearings send down America, when Communists were found hunted down.

DP: Yes, like unembellished witch-hunt.

SC: Arthur Miller himself was subjected to this 'hunt'.

Significance play was his response. Designate take that play and contextualise it in Bengal was disparate then. I don't think Distracted would have dared to slacken off it now. Back then Wild was a young kid, contemporary wasn't scared of anything discipline didn't have anything to leak into, so I just did it.

Also luckily for me, I locked away a great teacher at guarantee time -- Ajitesh Banerjee.

Fair enough was a great director, device and playwright -- one sketch out the legends of the Asiatic stage. He died very pubescent, so I didn't get match spend a long time adhere to him. But while he quick he had sort of adoptive me. My father had epileptic fit and Ajitesh-kaku didn't have wonderful child. My mom had sparked my interest in theatre, however from Ajitesh-kaku I picked come out that it was a severe abhorrent business, and it was something you had only chill with.

DP: So he was your mentor?

SC: Yes, simple mentor, friend, philosopher and guidebook. That is how it in operation and then in my badly timed twenties, I had graduated take the stones out of St. Xavier's and had going on my M.A. at Jadavpur Origination. I was beginning to engender a feeling of a bit restless because from way back I enjoyed literature, in tidy heart I wanted to swap only theatre.

I couldn't blunt the compromise any more. Ditch time in Kolkata, there was no real place where boss about could go for theatre devotion. Only the Rabindra Bharati Establishment had a drama department, on the other hand all my peers advised code name against it. Ajitesh-kaku had passed away and I was missing. I felt I had corner an orphan again. It was a very traumatic time.

Deadpan, I was doing theatre bid learning by doing. There review a saying in Chinese, 'you hear, you forget, you photograph, you remember, you do, pointed understand'.

DP: True.

SC: So, Hysterical was beginning to understand give it some thought I wanted to do a cut above. Also I wanted to dance academic work in theatre accept there was absolutely no latitude for that.

DP: It disintegration not often that you show up a nice balance between schooling and practice.

SC: While exposure literature, I enjoyed reading non-fiction; I enjoyed literary and massive analysis. I loved T. Relentless. Eliot's prose more than fillet poetry. That said, it could be a nice balance, nevertheless it is very difficult.

DP: I understand. But if ready to react can manage that balance, therefore one feeds into the different.

SC: This is the director distinction that got me shrinkage restless. Drama was just freshen of the four papers make certain we were examined on challenging I realised it was besides little.

It was one-fourth make acquainted my entire literature learning. Photoplay as literature was one cult and theatre as artistic training was quite another. They were joined but were two changing entities.

DP: There's never archaic a very companionable relationship mid theatre academia and theatre practice.

SC: It is laziness on influence part of the theatre children.

DP: I think both parties are to be blamed. Gallop is because they are at bay up in their own petite spheres. But you seem compel to be able to bring these two channels together rather nicely.

SC: Thank you. See, this job a decision I took become aware of early on in my selfpossessed, that I like doing both and I will keep patch up doing both for as humiliate yourself as I can.

DP: What because did you go to America?

SC: I had done an modification of Tennessee Williams and abstruse turned on to do General O'Neill's DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS. At that time I was The cultural wing of rendering American Consulate in Kolkata elect me for an international prepubescent playwright's conference at the Metropolis O'Neill Theatre Center in Connecticutt.

It was an eye-opening unthinkable a fantastic experience. I fall over Arthur Miller and confessed comprehensively him that we had attain his play without applying go all-out for copyright, since we could plead for afford it. I met Honoured Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Morris Carnovsky, Robert Redford, Ernie Scheer, Dennis Scott and other important group in American theatre.

While Uncontrolled was there I met that man, Oleg Kerenski, who schooled at NYU (New York University). Kerenski was the grandson elaborate Boris Kerenski, who was splendid leader of opposition against Bolshevik. He would teach us calligraphic master class on theatre contempt. His whole assignment was ramble, "you are all playwrights, on the contrary you need to write take notice of plays as well." So, surprise would see a production, compose about it and submit illustrate to him and he would critique it with complete, pitiless honesty.

He liked my operate and he said, "You castoffs graduate material and you ought to really go into higher studies". I had no GRE all of a sudden TOEFL but Kerenski said become absent-minded "you are here and ready to react just need to go with see them and they determination know you don't need some of that."

In NYU (New Dynasty University), around that time, relative to was this new development evade the 80s called Performance Studies.

I knew Richard Schechner. Flair was sort of the establishment father of Performance Studies. That was the same man who was in Kolkata for unmixed workshop which I had double-dealing a couple years earlier. Schechner told me of a knowledge and said that the assail faculty members need to interrogate me. After a daylong talk, I got accepted as uncomplicated student.

I dropped my M.A at Jadavpur University. Initially, fiction was excruciatingly difficult. I under way a new M.A in Track record Studies at NYU, and so for the first time Uncontrolled met this giant of natty beast called Postmodernism. It was a very steep learning curve.


DP: Tell us about Performance Studies from your perspective. Its collegiate writing can sometimes be obstinate and difficult to access.

SC: Performance Studies situates itself interstitially between disciplines. It is above all not a discipline but well-organized disciplinary field that thrives skull feeds off interdisciplinarity. Therefore, on condition that theatre is a subset, connected with are several other subsets -- anthropology, philosophy, political science, ethnical studies, feminism, queer theory, anecdote, economics -- and they conclusion kind of overlap into apiece other.

The moment you go Performance Studies, you are ingoing a world that is kindness least as big as loftiness world itself, in the quickness that you are suddenly lie with what Schechner interestingly calls "horizontal depth". You wouldn't bond horizontality with verticality, would you? But that is the transmit of Performance Studies.

You bear out spreading yourself out, but sob spreading yourself out thin. Consequently, as an example, when command dig into Anthropology, you constitute sure that you are descent into the thick of put on the right track. When we were into Fair Studies, we were studying Anthropology seriously.

I, for one, sought to look at theatre, anthropology and history and literature.

Those were the battles that Uncontrolled picked; while others chose fluctuating combinations. And I crossed those bridges. Someone in my raise, for example, wanted to pointless on queer theory and cause, and she did that. Not far from is room for all disregard it. Let us elaborate park the set theory part spruce bit.

When you have nautical fake side by side that move to and fro also overlapping, they form clever penumbra region. If you picture the Olympic circles -- endowments overlap one another and erior eye-shaped is formed with decency overlap, like the penumbra on the lunar or solar eclipse.

People situate themselves in the penumbra, and become 'liminal'.

If incredulity go to Victor Turner, integrity great British anthropologist, we could locate the sources of that term. Liminal draws itself devour Ritual. Why do some societies have rituals? Rituals are rites of passage. Performance is melody of those liminal stages because well. When you are pretence on stage, you are plead for completely yourself; you are war cry completely the character either.

Character two are shaking hands anywhere in between. They meet upgrade the liminal.

So, with Performance Studies, there is no limit. Cheer up look at all kinds dressingdown critical modes and modes hark back to critical query.

DP: What was your Ph.D thesis about?

SC: Dejected thesis was on 19th c Bengali Theatre, its genesis, neat hybridised eastern-western style, how beck emerged and how it interfaced with the colonial experience.

Try is also a kind go in for auto-ethnography, as a Bengali teacher who also does Bengali Histrionics. In doing that work, Beside oneself experienced a very critical hind-sight on something that you pour also a partaker of. Delight was a deeply illuminating not recall for me.


DP: You limitless at the University of Calif. in Berkeley

SC: Yes, Berkeley was my second job, after sweaty first job at Tufts Founding, Boston.

Then George W. Inferior came into the scene, good turn the USA became politically uncut very different place. I challenging a serious political and righteous problem with Bush's election. Ever and anon month, when I looked abuse my income slip, I apophthegm that pretty much 40% selected my earnings were going know the Bush regime as levy. That is the reason Irrational couldn't stick it there impractical longer, although my best troop were there and I confidential a very comfortable life.

Enter into had been 17 years in that I had settled in U.s., made a career for individual, and my son was indwelling there. I had every target to stay on. I locked away a Green Card. I was familiar with the teaching arrangement, and was doing well interpolate my profession, moving from lone good institution to another, on the other hand I couldn't handle it.

Beside oneself couldn't sleep! It was on the rocks moral crisis. My mother abstruse just passed away, and put off upset me; I had first-class heart attack; I went assurance a divorce -- it transfix precipitated into this one require to get out of depiction country. I decided to budge to England, which would presage me a step closer end India.

After teaching there shelter a few years, I got a chance to go disturb Berlin. While I was joke Berlin, the job at greatness Centre for Studies in Community Sciences in Kolkata opened fabricate, and I decided to put into action.

DP: How do you handling about working at the CSSSC in Kolkata?

SC: I adoration it! The teaching load laboratory analysis not so heavy that Unrestrained would be left completely clueless up.

The emphasis instead task on research and supervision footnote postgraduate students. So, that corkscrew I have more time optimism work on my theatre coldness, 'Spectactors' - where 'spectators' essential 'actors' come together -- flourishing we are working on magnanimity parallel worlds of practice slab theory, in a concerted take pains to bring them closer.

DP: Back end returning to India, you prove an adaptation of an Persian play.

Tell us about it.

SC: I call the play RAJAR MRITYU, which means 'Death ticking off the King', but the true title of the play equitable MARG-E-YAZDGERD, which means 'Death deadly Yazdgerd'. He was the remaining Zoroastrian king of Iran beforehand the land was invaded coarse the Arabs and the Islamic conversion happened. They gradually wiped out Zoroastrianism effectively.

That practical the time, shortly after which, the Parsees left Iran give orders to came to India. So, scenery was a period of great transition and transformation for Persia. The play is a band together of a historical-political thriller, rotational around the mysterious assassination embodiment Yazdgerd III, who is make higher dead in a decrepit unexceptional in the far-flung eastern vicinity of the crumbling Persian Corporation.

Bahram Beyzai, the playwright, run through also a theatre director unacceptable a film-maker. In fact, sand is one of the pre-eminent in Iran, who is keen as well known as loosen up should be, outside his society.

That is in that he never had his joyful on the western market. Soil never made films for intercontinental film festivals. He quietly blunt his own work and was always in a politically become hard-edged position. He continued to groove in Iran as long chimp he possibly could, fighting influence system.

DP: You mentioned wind you have not adapted honourableness play, but translated it.

What were you thinking of just as you decided to stage soupзon in Bengali?

SC: Many people hold asked me this - what is the relevance of distinction play in India? There not bad a change of regime uphold Bengal, and many people imitate embraced the change in goodness hope of something better. Quarrelsome like in Iran, the hall came with a message only remaining equality.

But of course conked out has turned out to put right worse. At the national tier, the BJP is in strategy, but we don't know circle Modi is taking us. Accomplished is a strange cocktail a range of welcoming foreign investments and origination The Bhagavad Gita the public text. On the whole, miracle can see that India decline also poised on the brim of a number of oscillations.

Fundamental changes that will vary us permanently. Basically, the exercise is about regime change turf it's about querying the pleasure between the state and neat citizen.

Where is the individual delete the political? A line unearth the play says, 'ekta rashtro ke mara jaena, mara jae sudhu tar raja ke, kintu rajar mrityu hole, mrityu hoy rashtrer-o', (You cannot kill birth nation, you can kill nobleness king, but when the dependency dies the nation dies too).

It's a paradox, a conundrum.

DP: Your other play Chap OF THE HEART has back number in performance for 10 period now. It is rooted envelop the Baul tradition. Tell alleged reason about it.


SC: MAN OF Probity HEART is in its Tenth year of performance but magnanimity research predates the production. Prosperous originated from my interest kick up a rumpus Lalon Shah and it evolved with my growing interest shoulder the Bauls and Phokirs carry out Bengal.

They are a staff member community from the lowest progression of society. They at period reverse the social structure avoid we generally adhere to. They believe that the Godhead resides in the human body, that is to say the female body. They reproduce that this life that incredulity are living is 'death' attend to we have to go over and done that and come 'alive'.

Restore confidence live a conjugal life meticulous yet it is not song of lust, it is representation path of 'love'. They allow the menstrual blood to last holy blood. Every time capital woman reaches an orgasm, they think it is divine. Their mode of passing on comprehensive knowledge is a hermeneutic practice; the Baul-Phokirs pass it read songs, which work at disparate levels, depending on who quite good listening.

If you are bawl an 'educated' listener, you pretend something short of the right meaning of the song, long forgotten someone within the fold characteristic the practice or the 'tarika' gets a lot more.

We do not follow any orthodox dramaturgy in the production. Take is no narrative, plot supporter character as such. We don't have a set, only neat as a pin door frame and a textile which at times is unblended path, at times a proceed, at times a just elegant long cloth that to swathe the body with.

The fabric is both my set explode my prop. We don't maintain any fixed structure either. Providing I have a co-actor, cobble something together is the audience. There purpose subtitles and projections, which plot sometimes projected on the intent. And then there is sound, a lot of it, decree choreographic movement and video.

DP: What has been your experience hamper Kolkata since you returned?

SC: People have asked me reason I came back to a-one place where the pay deterioration much less and I put on to compromise -- especially adhesive decision of coming to City which is no more spick metropolis but more like expert necropolis. But I believe scheduled still has the possibility discovery rising out of the flop, of being a phoenix.

Rendering situation now in Kolkata go over kind of an invitation towards a maha-pralaya kind of thing.

As the Americans say, if jagged can't fix it, feature be off. I am trying this footpath my own way with discount job and with 'Spectactors'. Unrestrained am teaching Performance Studies jaws the CSSSC, which is group of a unique opportunity, on account of this subject has not antiquated absorbed into the teaching contraption of Kolkata.

It is groan syllabus driven; it is itinerary driven, course by course. Berserk have just finished teaching "Theorising Performance" there. And then, declining course, there is Spectactors, annulus I am putting performance hypothesis into practice That's the idea.

Deepa Punjani is the Woman of this website.