Shoma A. Chatterji

Anton Chekov is one of the most universally recognized playwrights in world theatre. ‘Bhanu’ is the Bengali adaptation and contemporisation of the original play first staged in 1899, two years after the Russian playwright’s play was published. The first staging of the play was directed by none other than Konstantin Stanislavky noted for founding the internal and emotional involvement of actors in the characters they were cast in. Many performances of ‘Uncle Vanya’ have been staged over the...

Pinjar literally means “cage.” But the word can be expanded to mean more than a cage. In Rudrajit Roy’s debut film, the title refers both to birds, the bird-catcher and to other characters held captive in the larger and invisible cage called Life. “Pinjar is about captivity in its visible and invisible forms. It asks whether freedom is an external condition or an internal awakening. It does not provide solutions. It observes, reflects, and invites the audience to confront their own cages,”...

On the centenary of her birth, Mahasweta Devi’s work endures as a reckoning with power and neglect. Born in 1926, Mahasweta Devi remains, even after her death in 2016, one of India’s most formidable literary presences. Few writers have so insistently fused literature with moral urgency or treated writing as an act burdened with responsibility. Prolific she certainly was, producing over a hundred novels, hundreds of short stories and thousands of pages of reportage. As we take stock of this...