Thoughts on theatre

I was in office since morning but wrapped up the day with Shiladitya Ganguly, Bratya Basu and Locket Chatterjee over dinner at my home. Bratya (file picture), a well-known theatre artist, is very much concerned about Bangla theatre and its future. He has been instrumental in staging Bangla theatres throughout the country. We discussed the possibility of an International Theatre Festival in Kolkata inviting theatre groups from Moscow and the Broadway.

Shiladitya and Locket were supposed to go to Bangkok but changed minds at the last minute. Locket said she did not have the heart to go to Bangkok given the way the organisers handled things, especially her passports and travel. Shiladitya too is going to give NABC in the USA a miss for the soccer World Cup in South Africa.

Bratya is staging a play tomorrow at the Academy of Fine Arts and has invited me. I will drop in if I can manage my schedule. Talking about plays and theatre I recall my school days when I acted (picture)

in the Shakespearian play Julius Caesar and won the first prize for the role of a King I had also performed the main role in a play called Refund (picture) where I played the role of a student who comes back to the school asking his principal for a refund of fees since he felt that the education he received had not done any good to him.

School days are school days, other people watched me act in the plays but now watching plays is one of my favourite pastimes.

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