City artistes collaborate for a new play series

A bunch of young performing artistes, including Sumanta Roy, Prasenjit Bardhan, Gulshanara, Joydip Sinha and others, have collaborated to stage a series of plays, dedicated to six seasons in Bengal. Kothader Bioscope, a collection of six plays — of one hour each — will be staged at different venues all-round the year.


Elaborating on the concept, one of the key members, Gulshanara, said, “It starts off with Hemanta (late autumn). We are calling it Kothader Bioscope: HemantaAdhyay. Set in an imaginary railway station, it is a conversation between novelist Ismat Chughtai (played by me), poet

Binoy Majumdar

(played by Sumanta), Florentino Ariza (a fictional character of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, played by Debraj Bhattacharya and a transgender (played by Prasenjit). Each season will be directed by one of us. While this is my turn to direct, others will supervise it. I am really excited about essaying the role of my all-time favourite author, Chughtai.”


While Debraj Bhattacharya and Joydip have composed the music, Soumen Halder has done the lights. The first show will be staged on December 7. “There will be two shows back-to-back. We will do some more shows in January,” said Gulshanara, a regular face on city stage. Recently, she played an important character in Tamal Raichowdhury’s directorial, Dui HujurerVrityo, with Goutam Halder in the lead. In the play, she essayed a character of a domestic help, Sutanuka. Later, she also worked in a play, Anabrito — The Naked, by theatre group Atmik.