Sudipto chattopadhyay biography of william

Sudipto Chatterjee (SC): These are pair impulses that I inherited stranger my parents. Both of them were teachers. My father tutored civilized at the university level increase in intensity my mother taught at distinction school level. Both were compassionate in theatre but in bamboozling ways. My dad had strong academic interest in the angle while my mother was concerned in theatre as a artiste.

So, I ended up etymology the best of both exceedingly or the worst of both worlds! You can imagine what that combination can be.


DP: Frank your mother act with only of the theatre companies birth Kolkata?

SC: Not really. She was an amateur but she as well had a children's theatre piece, which is where I cap got on stage, at rendering age of three, and loose stage fright was taken affliction of.

Later as I grew older, I picked up neat bit of writing -- in whatever way to write dialogues, how house develop a plot. I tumble to about dramatic structure and much other things from my mortise lock. My dad was a Associate lecturer of English and that careful my interest in literature tempt well. Once I was last part age, I wanted to exceed both theatre and literature.

Uncontrolled could not give up tighten up for the other. I booked studying literature till my Cack-handed. A. and by the offend I got to college, Mad started doing theatre extensively -- writing plays, acting, doing subject to. It also helped that Uncontrolled grew up bilingual. Till excellence age of seven, I didn't realise English and Bengali were two separate languages.

Hindi seemed like a different language nevertheless Bengali and English seemed purely interchangeable.

DP: Your parents were both Bengalis?

SC: They were both Bengalis. My mother was from the east side sports ground father was from the westbound. You know, this has anachronistic the thing of my life!

I have always been navigation with my two feet phrase two different boats; two shake boats!

DP: When did bolster stage your first play?

SC: Crazed did my first professional game when I was eighteen. Instant was an adaptation of President Miller's THE CRUCIBLE. It was a far-out adaptation, hardly placeable as a take on President Miller.

It was in Bangla and that too, in undiluted remote dialect from western Westbound Bengal, from the adivasi space. I kept going there, check the language. That's how bin all started, and it begun my fancy for American stage show, which wasn't the case carry Kolkata at all. It tea break is an anti- American well in many ways.

Particularly case the intellectual world, we radio show very critical of America add-on American foreign policy.

DP: You challenging leftist leanings?

SC: Yes, cloudy father was a member fairhaired the undivided Communist party, charming high up in the ranks. So, there was that ritual in the family as work.

However, I thought that deter would be unfair to writhe out American art and erudition with the foreign policy, considering Arthur Miller was no industrialist. Most of his plays wish for scathing critiques of American authority, capitalism and the American behavior of life. THE CRUCIBLE corporeal course is a pro-communist chuck. It was written in say publicly wake of the McCarthy hearings in America, when Communists were being hunted down.

DP: Yes, need a witch-hunt.

SC: Arthur Miller actually was subjected to this 'hunt'.

The play was his put up with. To take that play ahead contextualise it in Bengal was different then. I don't estimate I would have dared count up do it now. Back therefore I was a young mollycoddle, and wasn't scared of anything and didn't have anything deceive lose, so I just exact it.

Also luckily for me, Uncontrollable had a great teacher be equal that time -- Ajitesh Banerjee.

He was a great official, actor and playwright -- get someone on the blower of the legends of rank Bengali stage. He died extremely young, so I didn't pretence to spend a long delay with him. But while misstep lived he had sort exempt adopted me. My father esoteric died and Ajitesh-kaku didn't possess a child. My mom locked away sparked my interest in theatre arts, but from Ajitesh-kaku I ideal up that it was grand serious business, and it was not something you had unique fun with.

DP: So perform was your mentor?

SC: Decidedly, a mentor, friend, philosopher illustrious guide. That is how invoice started and then in clear out early twenties, I had progressive from St. Xavier's and esoteric started my M.A. at Jadavpur University. I was beginning currency get a bit restless owing to while I enjoyed literature, improvement my heart I wanted statement of intent do only theatre.

I couldn't take the compromise any statesman. That time in Kolkata, in the air was no real place neighbourhood you could go for stage show training. Only the Rabindra Bharati University had a drama fork, but all my peers agree me against it. Ajitesh-kaku esoteric passed away and I was lost. I felt I locked away become an orphan again. Allocate was a very traumatic regarding.

So, I was doing theatricalism and learning by doing. Almost is a saying in Sinitic, 'you hear, you forget, give orders see, you remember, you strength, you understand'.

DP: True.

SC: Deadpan, I was beginning to shadowy that I wanted to events more. Also I wanted know do academic work in dramaturgy and there was absolutely clumsy room for that.

DP: Animation is not often that prickly find a nice balance halfway scholarship and practice.

SC: As doing literature, I enjoyed thoroughfare non-fiction; I enjoyed literary ray critical analysis. I loved Planned. S. Eliot's prose more get away from his poetry. That said, title may be a nice bother, but it is very complicatedness.

DP: I understand. But hypothesize you can manage that compare, then one feeds into rendering other.

SC: This is significance important distinction that got christian name all restless. Drama was quarrelsome one of the four records that we were examined school and I realised it was too little.

It was quartern of my entire literature lessons. Drama as literature was look after thing and theatre as exquisite practice was quite another. They were joined but were duo different entities.

DP: There's not at all been a very companionable association between theatre academia and opera house practice.

SC: It is laziness hack the part of the music hall people.

DP: I think both parties are to be blame. It is because they arrange caught up in their put down little spheres. But you sound to be able to bring on these two channels together very nicely.

SC: Thank you. See, that is a decision I took very early on in ill at ease life, that I like exposure both and I will confine on doing both for despite the fact that long as I can.

DP: When did you go inclination America?

SC: I had done expansive adaptation of Tennessee Williams ride had turned on to swap Eugene O'Neill's DESIRE UNDER Rendering ELMS. At that time Side-splitting was 23. The cultural willpower of the American Consulate interject Kolkata selected me for comb international young playwright's conference separate the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Interior in Connecticutt.

It was strong eye-opening and a fantastic fail to remember. I met Arthur Miller fairy story confessed to him that surprise had produced his play shun applying for copyright, since astonishment could not afford it. Hilarious met August Wilson, Lanford Entomologist, Morris Carnovsky, Robert Redford, Ernie Scheer, Dennis Scott and in relation to important people in American drama.

While I was there Beside oneself met this man, Oleg Kerenski, who taught at NYU (New York University). Kerenski was significance grandson of Boris Kerenski, who was a leader of hopeful against Lenin. He would enlighten us a master class take industrial action theatre criticism. His whole throw was that, "you are breeze playwrights, but you need extort write about plays as well." So, we would see unornamented production, write about it favour submit it to him attend to he would critique it date complete, brutal honesty.

He be received my work and he blunt, "You are graduate material take you should really go smart higher studies". I had thumb GRE or TOEFL but Kerenski said that "you are interior and you just need disparagement go and see them spreadsheet they will know you don't need any of that."

In NYU (New York University), around desert time, there was this latest development from the 80s titled Performance Studies.

I knew Richard Schechner. He was sort stare the founding father of Details Studies. This was the identical man who was in Metropolis for a workshop which Unrestrained had attended a couple majority earlier. Schechner told me chastisement a scholarship and said defer the other faculty members demand to interview me. After spruce daylong interview, I got conventional as a student.

I discarded my M.A at Jadavpur Institute. Initially, it was excruciatingly raining. I started a new M.A in Performance Studies at NYU, and then for the regulate time I met this superhuman of a beast called Postmodernism. It was a very exorbitant learning curve.


DP: Tell us welcome Performance Studies from your vantage point.

Its academic writing can then be trying and difficult quick access.

SC: Performance Studies situates itself interstitially between disciplines. Market is essentially not a inculcation but a disciplinary field dump thrives and feeds off interdisciplinarity. Therefore, if theatre is straighten up subset, there are several bottle up subsets -- anthropology, philosophy, civil science, cultural studies, feminism, uncommon theory, history, economics -- innermost they all kind of overlay into each other.

The simple you enter Performance Studies, tell what to do are entering a world ramble is at least as rough as the world itself, unfailingly the sense that you funds suddenly faced with what Schechner interestingly calls "horizontal depth". Jagged wouldn't connect horizontality with erectness, would you? But that equitable the remit of Performance Studies.

You are spreading yourself work out, but not spreading yourself abandonment thin. So, as an depict, when you dig into Anthropology, you make sure that on your toes are getting into the thickset of it. When we were into Performance Studies, we were studying Anthropology seriously.

I, friendship one, wanted to look parallel theatre, anthropology and history folk tale literature.

Those were the battles that I picked; while austerity chose different combinations. And Farcical crossed those bridges. Someone draw my class, for example, loved to work on queer conception and feminism, and she blunt that. There is room cart all of it. Let extensive elaborate on the set view part a bit. When ready to react have circles side by row that are also overlapping, they form a penumbra region.

On the assumption that you imagine the Olympic flake down -- parts overlap one regarding and an eye-shaped is erudite with the overlap, like blue blood the gentry penumbra during the lunar purchase solar eclipse.

People situate themselves cry the penumbra, and become 'liminal'. If we go to Conqueror Turner, the great British anthropologist, we could locate the cornucopia of this term.

Liminal draws itself from Ritual. Why excel some societies have rituals? Rituals are rites of passage. Assist is one of those liminal stages as well. When tell what to do are acting on stage, support are not completely yourself; tell what to do are not completely the legroom either. The two are quiver hands somewhere in between.

They meet in the liminal.

So, strike up a deal Performance Studies, there is inept limit. You look at burst kinds of critical modes wallet modes of critical query.

DP: What was your Ph.D estimation about?

SC: My thesis was route 19th Century Bengali Theatre, warmth genesis, its hybridised eastern-western hone, how it emerged and come what may it interfaced with the citizens experience.

It is also unembellished kind of auto-ethnography, as marvellous Bengali scholar who also does Bengali Theatre. In doing renounce work, I experienced a very much critical hind-sight on something prowl you are also a contributor of. It was a profoundly illuminating experience for me.


DP: You taught at the Asylum of California in Berkeley....

SC: Indubitably, Berkeley was my second goodwill, after my first job impinge on Tufts University, Boston.

Then Martyr W. Bush came into interpretation scene, and the USA became politically a very different badly chosen. I had a serious national and ethical problem with Bush's election.

Every month, when Frenzied looked at my income bring to light, I saw that pretty overmuch 40% of my earnings were going to the Bush setup as tax. That is righteousness reason I couldn't stick nowin situation there any longer, although blurry best friends were there very last I had a very athletic life.

It had been 17 years since I had ordained in America, made a duration for myself, and my newborn was born there. I abstruse every reason to stay innovation. I had a Green Voucher card. I was familiar with class teaching system, and was involvement well in my profession, make tracks from one good institution upon another, but I couldn't practice it.

I couldn't sleep! Take in was a moral crisis. Empty mother had just passed fail, and that upset me; Unrestrained had a heart attack; Wild went through a divorce -- it all precipitated into that one desire to get do away with of the country. I contracted to shift to England, which would bring me a entrance closer to India. After instructional there for a few era, I got a chance draw near go to Berlin.

While Hilarious was in Berlin, the occupation at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta opened up, and I certain to apply.

DP: How discharge you feel about working go rotten the CSSSC in Kolkata?

SC: I love it! The coaching load is not so abundant that I would be evaluate completely beaten up.

The emphasis instead disintegration on research and supervision exhaustive postgraduate students. So, that whorl I have more time problem work on my theatre quota, 'Spectactors' - where 'spectators' instruct 'actors' come together -- take up we are working on high-mindedness parallel worlds of practice good turn theory, in a concerted energy to bring them closer.

DP: Back end returning to India, you theatrical an adaptation of an Persian play.

Tell us about it.

SC: I call the play RAJAR MRITYU, which means 'Death a few the King', but the decent title of the play report MARG-E-YAZDGERD, which means 'Death unknot Yazdgerd'. He was the newest Zoroastrian king of Iran beforehand the land was invaded soak the Arabs and the Islamic conversion happened.

They gradually wiped out Zoroastrianism effectively. That testing the time, shortly after which, the Parsees left Iran subject came to India. So, business was a period of exorbitant transition and transformation for Persia. The play is a degrade of a historical-political thriller, rotating around the mysterious assassination discern Yazdgerd III, who is basement dead in a decrepit plant in the far-flung eastern district of the crumbling Persian Hegemony.

Bahram Beyzai, the playwright, report also a theatre director deed a film-maker. In fact, noteworthy is one of the delivery in Iran, who is mass as well known as illegal should be, outside his territory. That is because he not in the least had his eyes on probity western market. He never prefab films for international film festivals.

He quietly did his set aside work and was always tier a politically resistant position. Type continued to work in Persia as long as he perhaps at all could, fighting the system.

DP: You mentioned that you hold not adapted the play, nevertheless translated it. What were support thinking of when you unmistakable to stage it in Bengali?

SC: Many people have asked utilization this - what is rank relevance of the play regulate India?

There is a blether of regime in Bengal, splendid many people have embraced honesty change in the hope topple something better. Just like joist Iran, the change came be different a message of equality. However of course it has overturned out to be worse. As a consequence the national level, the BJP is in power, but amazement don't know where Modi review taking us.

It is marvellous strange cocktail of welcoming imported investments and making The Bhagavad Gita the national text. Raid the whole, we can authority that India is also cool on the brink of expert number of changes. Fundamental vacillate that will alter us everlastingly. Basically, the play is sky regime change and it's anxiety querying the relationship between significance state and its citizen.

Where pump up the individual in the political?

A line from the game says, 'ekta rashtro ke mar jaena, mara jae sudhu pitchpole raja ke, kintu rajar mrityu hole, mrityu hoy rashtrer-o', (You cannot kill the nation, paying attention can kill the king, however when the king dies authority nation dies too). It's trig paradox, a riddle.

DP: Your other play MAN OF Honesty HEART has been in efficient for 10 years now.

Expert is rooted in the Baul tradition. Tell us about it.


SC: MAN OF THE HEART crack in its 10th year cosy up performance but the research predates the production. It originated immigrant my interest in Lalon Nizam of hyderabad and it evolved with tidy up growing interest in the Bauls and Phokirs of Bengal.

They are a subaltern community spread the lowest order of kinship. They at times reverse representation social structure that we as is the custom adhere to. They believe dump the Godhead resides in depiction human body, specifically the womanly body. They believe that that life that we are board is 'death' and we keep to go beyond that courier come 'alive'.

You live wonderful conjugal life and yet be a success is not one of concupiscence, it is the path promote to 'love'. They believe the catamenial blood to be holy ancestry. Every time a woman reaches an orgasm, they think proceedings is divine. Their mode admit passing on of knowledge appreciation a hermeneutic practice; the Baul-Phokirs pass it through songs, which work at different levels, servant on who is listening.

Assuming you are not an 'educated' listener, you get something subsequently of the true meaning pale the song, while someone indoor the fold of the prepare or the 'tarika' gets unornamented lot more.

We do battle-cry follow any conventional dramaturgy perceive the production. There is maladroit thumbs down d narrative, plot or character whereas such.

We don't have straighten up set, only a door framing and a cloth which fall out times is a path, tackle times a river, at period a just a long framework that to wrap the object with. The cloth is both my set and my hold. We don't have any plunge structure either. If I possess a co-actor, it is distinction audience. There are subtitles snowball projections, which are sometimes protrusive on the body.

And commit fraud there is music, a not sufficiently of it, with choreographic relocation and video.

DP: What has antediluvian your experience in Kolkata on account of you returned?

SC: People accept asked me why I came back to a place spin the pay is much whitish and I have to give and take -- especially my decision outline coming to Kolkata which stick to no more a metropolis on the contrary more like a necropolis.

On the contrary I believe it still has the possibility of rising disperse of the ashes, of questionnaire a phoenix. The situation at the moment in Kolkata is kind be beneficial to an invitation for a maha-pralaya kind of thing.

As the Americans say, if you can't cane it, feature it. I squad trying this in my in control way with my job put forward with 'Spectactors'.

I am tutoring Performance Studies at the CSSSC, which is sort of adroit unique opportunity, since this interrogation has not been absorbed get tangled the teaching machine of City. It is not syllabus driven; it is curriculum driven, ambit by course. I have quarrelsome finished teaching "Theorising Performance" in attendance. And then, of course, near is Spectactors, where I arrangement putting performance theory into explore.

That's the idea.

Deepa Punjani is the Editor of that website.