Kolkata based Usha Ganguli’s ANTARYATRA is true to its name. The 63 year-old director-actress indeed takes us through a very personal and inner-driven journey in theatre. Ganguli has played a variety of women characters (Nora, Himmat Mai, Rudali, Kamla, Anima) on stage and her experiences obviously enrich her one-woman show. In that context, Avishkar rightly hosted her performance for the March 8 International Women’s Day. ANTARYATRA is a tribute to at least a dozen crucial female heroines played by Ganguli who are representatives of real-life women – each one belonging to a distinct social space and yet bound in some way by the virtue of being a woman.
Ganguli has a captivating acting style- very naturalistic. Therefore when she talks of the genesis of a particular role, the fellow artistes involved, the real-life women who inspired her theatre work, none of these aspects get boring at any point in time. At times, she does sound a bit indulgent though. There are also times when she is muffled and unintelligible because the excitement in her one-person delivery eats away at some of the words. In some places she packs in a bit too much for consumption as well as touches upon some roles without much initiation. For instance, the reference to her adaption of Jyoti Mapsekar’s MULGI ZAALI HO (BETI AAYI HAI) is hurried and confusing. It should have been placed in the social context that is crucial for Ganguli’s choice of script.
But despite these minor blemishes, Ganguli’s stage presence exudes warmth. It is heartening to see the kind of homework she has done, and still continues to do, for each role. The effort she puts into every project comes across and so does her artistic growth as an actress. Using voice modulations, stage movements, body language and minimal props, she negotiates with the complex realities that each of her stage roles demand. That’s precisely why she is credible as an impoverished village woman at one point and then suddenly she becomes a Jewish wife in Fascist Germany, and seconds later she adorns the cap of a playful teenage girl.
ANTARYATRA is in many ways a reflection of what Usha Ganguli stands for in Indian theatre -- an affable-approachable person, a sensitive director and, most importantly, the founder of the 33 year-old Kolkata-based Rangakarmee theatre group. At a time when it is getting increasingly difficult for directors to hold on to a repertoire company, she has done exemplary theatre with actors of varying backgrounds as well as with non-actors who have been moulded into performers.
Ganguli is a Hindi literature lecturer in the Bhawanipur Education Society College and she is among the foremost practitioners of Hindi theatre in Bengal. A great believer in the language of theatre, Ganguli’s ANTARYATRA depicts the sensitive use of that theatre language. She overtly makes a case for a theatre that rises above linguistic divisions. What else can explain her choice of Marathi playwrights like Mahesh Elkunchwar and Ratnakar Matkari on the one hand and Rabindranath Tagore and Bertolt Brecht on the other.
ANTARYATRA is also a manifestation of her core belief in interaction. ‘Do people really meet and talk these days? Or do they just happen to be exchange information?” That is her straight question to the audience. Unless men and women interact and share ideas, unless they put together their thoughts and debate over them, neither the Performing Arts, nor life can bloom. In that sense, Ganguli has a unique pan-Indian vision of theatre which comes across vividly in this play.
*The writer is a keen observer of theatre and other Performing Arts, she is a freelance writer and a journalism teacher at the Xavier’s Institute of Communications (XIC). She also writes a fortnightly column on Marathi theatre trends for Time Out Mumbai.
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