A heart-Wringing ride
I think; people who adore theatre might have hardly missed this ride, for there was an overwhelming flush of audience in the Nachghar last Wednesday. It was a remarkably portrayed play that took the spectators along its heightening, widening and deepening emotional flux.
The story is an autobiography of a low-birth concubine, Binodini, who develops affection for theatre so much so that she dedicates herself to the theatre abandoning the colorful and affluent life of a Kept. She truly respects that divine world of theatre where women like her are enlightened by the deep knowledge of world’s best plays; the philosophy, the truth, the sense of humanity and divinity underlying in the masterpieces of Shakespeare and Milton. Theatre tends to anchor them out of the deep crevasse of flesh-market. But things do not go as expected; Binodini again has to sell her flesh for the price of the theatre building. “If the sale of my flesh, once and for all, can put this flesh-market to an end forever, then it’s worth it”, she thinks, and submits herself to the malice. However, to her chagrin, the history rejects the enormity of this sacrifice. Even her master urges her to distort the reality and present only the rosiness of her theater-life in that autobiography, Amar Katha.
The main plot is simple. It drags throughout. The main tension is simple. It hooks. Opulent costumes. It evokes the memories of those good-old-Indian days. Enchanting music; hypnotizing, tear-triggering. Excellent scripting, that reminds Tagore’s elaborative, metaphoristic style. Acting that squeezes heart, that sneaks deep into the mind and encompasses all the senses. The brilliant acting was the heart of the play, those uncanny portrayals of the layers of the womanhood and the sufferings. Unfailing lighting, choreography, direction, casting and all.
Written, directed, acted and crew-majored by women, it mainly permeates some kind of feministic aura. To build the world as it is today, women had had to sacrifice a lot, be it the Goddesses, or the mothers or the prostitutes of every time and everyplace; the play propels to think. Somewhere it reminds of “Vagina Monologues’”, the rebel against the battering and shattering of womanhood. Hats off to Amar Allana, the directress.
The legendry artist Kiran Manandhar Painted an abstract art after seeing the play. And I, too, penned abstract lines after seeing that. Let’s read:
O! My thousand-petaled woman
Watch out for the wind
That’ll disentangle the thousand-pollens
Or, you’ll be crimson and done for
