Take literature to people via stage

Theatre as Literary festival? Some people arched their eyebrows on hearing about Kohe Birangana from Dhaka or Sohini and Rudraprasad Sengupta reading Rabindranath in the India-Bangladesh Maitree Bandhan series initiated by TOI. So had I, years ago, when Naseeruddin Shah had read Premchand's Bade Bhaiyya in SNA's theatre festival. "This is no theatre," I'd thought to myself."Where's the physicality that's central to theatre?"
However, the subsequent years have made me revise my views. I was totally converted when I saw Goutam Haldar's Bordada, which relied on vocal delivery of the text despite the use of a video projection on a backdrop screen. I realised that if action, blocking, body language are all substances that make for scintillating theatre, so is voice modulation. Both tug at our emotions - voice throw a tad more so, in all likelihood. That explains why drama is more popular than mime. That also accounts for the robust tradition of Sruti Natak which was an integral part of radio in our growing up years.
The centrality of literature to theatre cannot be over emphasized. Can we think of English Literature without Shakespeare? The Bard of Avon lives more often because of Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear than for recitation of sonnets, even about "the marriage of true minds." The converse holds true for Tagore, though India too has known Kalidas through Shakuntalam. And our epics? Why, Ramayan and Mahabharat have also lived through centuries, and from Rajasthan to Manipur and the Himalayas to the Ocean, through Ram Lila, Jatra, Pandavani, Yakshagana, Kathakali...
Come to think of it, ours has been primarily an oral tradition. Now, perhaps it is time to go back to the theatre to provide sustenance to our literature. For, today, television has taken away our reading hours. Our children no longer bring home story books from school libraries - text books are all they have time for. Internet feeds them with more information than the pundits can, but what about emotion? Reflection? Realisation?
And then, theatre helps to cut through language barriers. When Shuvasis Sinha stages Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Birangana Kabya, the heart wrenching emotions of the lamenting ladies Duhshala, Draupadi or Jona are communicated through voice modulation and physical drama. And when Kaushik Sen stages Samudrer Mouna, as translated from the French original by Bishnu Dey, again the actions gain from the cadences of the poet's words. So in the end the practice benefits both streams of the arts.
We therefore look forward to hearing Sohini and Rudraprasad Sengupta. Will they read or recite? Let's say they'll perform a bouquet titled 'Amar Priya Rabindranath'. Equally we wait to hear writers Namita Gokhale, Syed Manzoorul Islam and Anisul Hoque read from their writings. They will provide us with an insight into the minds of two peoples who share their history, their emotions, their practices. So will Sunil Gangopadhyay and Asaduzzaman Noor when they recite their poems.
Cold print in black and white will come to life in multifarious tones and mellifluous pitches. Do we still need to worry whether it is literature or theatre?