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Direction :
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Kamaluddin Nilu
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This Bangla play, produced by the Centre for Asian Theatre, Dhaka, Bangladesh and directed by Kamaluddin Nilu was staged on 12th January 2008 at the Mini Theatre of the PL Deshpande auditorium. It was part of the National School of Drama’s (NSD) satellite festival in Mumbai. The play wasn’t one of the popular, straight jacket types of theatre and was therefore not intended for the masses but for eclectic theatre viewers and the discerning practitioner who is interested in giving great literary works of art, a visual form.
The arrangement of the set was pleasing; right in the centre was an enormous dark gray cloth with suspended pouches that got animated during the performance. On both sides the two musicians- one with a flute and the other with a Xylophone were in full view of the audience and were an integral part of the performance. A dramatization of one of the best known novellas by Franz Kafka, the play follows the original, surreal story about the travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who gets transformed into a ‘monstrous vermin’. The novella, which is regarded as a highly symbolic tale is open to all sorts of interpretations. The metaphor of the huge spider like creature is particularly gripping.
In a world devoid of transcendence, probably non-human creatures regard the enormous superiority of man as nothing more than a source of constraint and fear, as they have no understanding of its origin. This adaptation addresses two fundamental issues- Gregor Samsa’s fading self-esteem and his humiliation by his family. Once again this experimental theatre work has depth and a strange inexplicable but captivating quality. It symbolizes the bizarre like nature of the human predicament that lacks both conceivable reason and escape! It’s a No Exit situation. In Gregor Samsa’s struggle we collectively experience the supreme dilemma of human existence.
*The writer is a senior theatre and television person who has trained under Ebrahim Alkazi at the National School of Drama (NSD). She has written for publications such as ‘The Asian Age’ and is a regular contributor to the Prithvi Theatre Newsletter (PT Notes). She also offers theatre training to students at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and is an important critical voice for the Gujarati Theatre.
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