About Shakuntala in shakuntala, Kolkata

SHAKUNTALA by Evald Flisar

The Play

Shakuntala is not a realistic play, but it does have realistic touches and ironic inserts without which it would remain inaccessible to today's viewers. It is conceived as a series of stylised interchanges.
The work is conceived in free verse, and takes the form of a modern tragicomedy. It is a plea for tolerant coexistence between different nations and cultures, but it is also a veiled condemnation of the global cultural imperialism that subjugates everything that is “other” and “different” to its
own interpretation. On the other hand, it tries to reinterpret and understand the meaning of ‘love’. Reinterpretation of the play is two-fold. On the external level it is a contemporary attempt to replay the best-known love story of classical India in the framework of our present-day reality, with the characteristics of the original characters transposed on three rather ordinary people of today, with all the paraphernalia of our everyday life. On the level of the plot, the classical story is reinterpreted, at first half-jokingly and then for real, by the two leading characters because they
happen to have the same names as the original characters, each with his or her cultural references.

Playwright’s note:

I believe that the past (as we interpret it) and the present (as we experience it) are mysteriously intertwined, presenting a continuing picture of our human concerns. That is why in my plays I tend
to draw on literary tradition as much as on my own feelings and thoughts about our contemporary dilemmas. That's what I did with my previous play presented by Ganakrishti, Antigone now, where I reworked the best-known Western classical play, Antigone by Sophocles, in the light of the
prevalent neo-liberal capitalist reality to show how political power (and its abuse) and individual will (or its abuse) have changed in the last two thousand years. In the same way I have used Shakuntala, essentially a story about love between two people who are not perceived to be
equals, to show the misunderstandings between East and West, two cultures that still fail to achieve a fruitful symbiosis. In the final analysis, my Shakuntala is a condemnation of the blind Western superiority.

Directors’ note:

When we approached Evald with the request to stage his play Shakuntala, he immediately agreed. Not only so, he has agreed to be the mentor. His Shakuntala takes Kalidasa's Recognition of Shakuntala as a starting point and then develops his own drama, a contemporary
tragicomedy, based on three characters that live in the present and are defined by their respective cultures. They reenact the original love story as an examination of today's world: of the meaning of love, of the incompatibility of east and west, of the desire for a unified, truly global
culture of mutual understanding. We believe the play is a marriage of different sensibilities, of the past and the present, of happiness, despair and hope. We believe any relationship could not last
long if it lacks mutual respects and mutual understandings. This is somewhat true for west’s love on east, in other words, India.

Ganakrishti Presents:

SHAKUNTALA

CAST & CREDIT:

Madhavya - dipak das

Shakuntala - soma dutta

Dushyanata - hillol chakraborty

Singer - sudipta saha

Playwright - evald flisar

Translator & advisor - amitava dutta

Direction - amit ganguly & ankan roy

Light - sudip sanyal

Music - raja mukhopadhyay

Light projection - sujit

Set Design - tapas mill

Make over - abhijit ghosh

Graphics & Titling - manish das

Sound - sanjay das

Set Construction - madan haldar

Production Support - alok paul, amit lahiri, indrajit
sinha, indranil lahiri, lakshmikanta
laha, lopamudra lahiri, raju das,
srabani paul, srijit roy, swarnendu
sen, tarak saha, tirthankar
mukhopadhyay, sumit das, utpal
sarkar

Special thanks to …

· The translator of this play received a grant from the Slovenian Book Agency

Contact – Ankan Roy – 9830315269 & Amit Ganguly – 9007011101