Bengali Theater in North America : My First Experience

Since 1989 I have been involved with Bangla Theater in USA. Over the years I have worked with several groups, several associations and have been involved with several theater productions. My theater journey in this country started with the theater group Sansaptak with their production “Sabda Moho Bandhane”. The play was directed by Sakti Sengupta.  Being involved with theater since my childhood, I was a bit skeptic about the theater scenario in USA when I first arrived in this country.  But my first experience was not only a pleasant surprise but an extremely enjoyable one.  All the stereo typical notions of expatriate Bengali theater were shattered with that production.  Sakti-da took us through a complete production development process of a new play. The script was developed based on Shirshendu Mukherjee’s short stories, Sunil Ganguly and Sakti Chattopadhyay’s poems.  It was not a simple narrative, but rather a complex collage of character’s, their relationships, their dreams and disillusionment. Continue reading

Jayanti’s are For Ever!

By Amitava Sen

Rabindranath Tagore The derivative meaning of the word “Jayanti” in Bengali is, an occasion to acclaim and praise, linguistically speaking. But the word really means a Jubilee, celebration of certain anniversaries. More often it means celebration of birthdays of famous persons, usually dead than alive. In our case, the dates of these anniversaries could be an amalgam of many calendars. Saints and spiritual gurus are observed according to lunar calendar; Sri Ramakrishna is celebrated on the second day of the new moon on the eleventh month (Falgun) of the Bengali era. Poets and littérateurs have their assigned days in accordance with the dates of Bengali calendar, as in 25th of the first month (Baisakh) of the calendar for the poet Rabindra Nath Thakur and for some, the ones dealing with science, politics, sports etc. as per the Christian calendar; January 23rd for Subhas Chandra Bose, for example.

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