A Letter in Solo

 Play Review

Play:                        Strir Patra

Adaptation:             Short story ‘Strir Patra’ by Rabindranath Tagore

Director:                 Seema Biswas

Actor:                      Seema Biswas

Duration:                45 minutes (solo performance)

The difference between a ‘star’ and an ‘artist’ carries a subtle demarcation. However, when theatre and film actress, Seema Biswas, who shot to fame with Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, rises on the stage to perform the Hindi adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Strir Patra (The Wife’s Letter), the aesthetic demarcation is not so subtle.  It’s yet another imagined realm of hope.

Her 45-minute solo performance marked the beginning of the 20^th National Theatre Festival 2013. This is an annual event organized by the Raigarh chapter of Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in Raigarh, the cultural capital of Chhattisgarh. Directed by Biswas herself, the play depicts the life of Mrinal, an exceptionally beautiful, independent and assertive woman married in a typical aristocratic family in pre-independence Bengal. The play makes it yet again transparent that the combination of beauty with sharp intellect seems unacceptable in a typical male-dominant society. In this version of patriarchy, it is her ‘rare will’ and resilience to challenge entrenched male structures that forms the scaffolding of the plot.

The play’s opening marks the start of Mrinal’s journey to a place far away from home in the course of which she writes ‘one letter’ to her husband. The narrative of this solitary letter constitutes the whole play in its intrinsic complexity and texture, and explains her struggle which continues all through her married life. Given her energy and apt portrayal of Mrinal, Biswas does full justice to the character.

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Biswas swept the play with her sheer talent and versatility -- a tough job for a solo performer in an act of such a long duration. Lighting by Daulat Vaid, a National School of Drama (NSD) pass-out, enlightens the direction. The play has some situational Bengali songs marking Mrinal’s deeper emotional terrain of expression. Biswas’s voice coupled with the soft music by another NSD pass out, Viplomb Barkakoti, transcends both script and language, and reaches across to the entire audience spectrum.

Not only does it illustrate the plight of women in ‘Renaissance Bengal’, the play is a perfect example of the immortality of Tagore’s writings. The touching and disturbing composition of Mrinal’s letter raises a perpetual question: has anything changed?

The answer lies in Seema Biswas’s version of Strir Patra: “Our society is progressing only at the surface level and its bitter reality comes to light if we scratch that shiny surface. Why does the woman of today suffer repression? Why can’t she live with her head held high? She should survive and with respect. That’s the message and the medium of this solo and this play.”