***Safi Ahmed's language is simple yet laden with high seriousness. His perspective and voice is of a pluralist who has adopted different critical tools ranging from Marxism to psychoanalysis, feminism to stylistics.***
NATYAKATHA: Dur O Kachher is a collection of essays on drama and theatre. These essays by Shafi Ahmed, as the title suggests, are from far and wide corners of the world. Primarily written for different little magazines, these essays have eventually found their niche in the present book form in the wrapping illustrated by the 'mindscape artist' Syed Iqbal. In this collection, Ahmed has included ten different essays on Shakespeare, Shakespeare's influence on Tagore, defiance in Tagore's work, Ibsen's Nora and Tagore's Mrinal, the quintessence of Ibsenism in Bangla theatre, expressionism in German theatre, performance of Brecht in Bangladesh, pros and cons of playing host to foreign dramas on local stage, the quest of Wole Soyinka, and an account of Arthur Miller's life. With Ahmed, we travel around the globe to meet both canonical and counter-canonical writers and delve into their works and performances.
Our first stopover is England where Shakespeare, undoubtedly the greatest playwright ever, has become a commodity. Sidestepping issues of commercialisation, Ahmed focuses on artistic reconstruction of Shakespeare. He looks at Tom Stoppard's redoing of Shakespeare's Hamlet under the title of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Ahmed gives an account of how Stoppard remoulds two minor characters of Hamlet and reverses its tragic mode. In Stoppard, Hamlet's famous soliloquy "to be or not to be" becomes a commonplace observation "to be intrigued without ever quite being enlightened." On the other hand, Ahmed refers to the Collage Hamlet by Charles Marowitz, to show us how a stage prop like a toy sword can mar the high seriousness of Hamlet's same utterance. Marowitz, Ahmed tells us, consciously attempts to break the Shakespearean myth without disturbing the myth of Hamlet itself. Ahmed's essay, in its brief scope, makes us alive to the idea of intertextuality involving Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The second essay details Shakespeare's influence on Tagore. Tagore, we are told, not only translated Macbeth but also used many Shakespearean imagery in his own works. Ahmed quotes extensively
both from Shakespeare and Tagore to point out analogous expressions. The next essay involves a different self of Tagore. Here, Ahmed breaks the romantic image of Tagore and upholds elements of defiance and resistance in Tagore's writings. This goes beyond rejection of knighthood by Sir Rabindranath Tagore following the Jalinwalabagh massacre. Ahmed offers a micro reading of Tagore to locate the poet against all social and economic discriminations.
Tagore continues to persist in the fourth essay. Here, a comparative study of Nora and Mrinal - two powerful, female characters from two different worlds provided by Ahmed to suggest the plight of women all over the world are essentially same. Mrinal in Tagore's short story "Streer Patra" (The Letter from a Wife) is not at all different from Nora in Norwegian playwright Ibsen's A Doll's House. Ahmed also mentions that the characters of Nora and Mrinal were created following two landmark publications: John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection of Women and Begum Rokeya's Sultana's Dream. However, Ahmed admits that although Tagore's familiarity of Rokeya's work cannot be confirmed, there is a strong possibility that Tagore gave voice to the changing attitude towards women. Throughout this essay (and in other essays
Natyakatha: Dur O Kachher By Shafi Ahmed
Oitijhya Publishers; Pg. 150, Tk. 120
as well), Ahmed refers to the title of Ibsen's drama as A Doll House without any possessive. Now, one wonders whether the possessive ('s) is missing in the original title or is it a working of the proverbial printmonster! Ahmed really should have clarified why he has used A Doll House instead of A Doll's House. And I admit my ignorance in this regard.
Ibsen becomes the lynchpin between the fourth and the fifth essay. Ahmed records how Ibsen's dramas have found currencies in our soil. He mentions some of the transcreations. One such redoing of Ibsen is Shambhu Mitra's adaptation of A Doll House [?]. Ahmed quoted Mitra who thinks it of less importance to include the Tarantula dance in our context. Mitra's rendering of the drama excludes the dance as well replaces the songs with quotation from Tagore. Ahmed's view on universalising of Ibsen is intriguing.
The next essay involves an introductory survey of German expressionist dramas. Like his other essays, Ahmed cites a lot of secondary sources to introduce a particular school of German theatre before local audience. Brecht appears in the following essay. In particular Ahmed looks at performances of Brecht's dramas in local stages. Ahmed holds that with Brecht epic theatre makes its inroads into our
theatre, which, by tradition, has followed proscenium style.
The eighth essay, I think, is the most original one in the whole collection. It appears that this essay was probably read at a seminar where Ahmed lists a number of foreign dramas that our stages have hosted. Ahmed has quite rightly pointed out the issue of acceptance and rejection in line of postcolonial theory while referring to foreign dramatists. He is reminding his fellow theatre men of the odds of choosing a foreign drama and then presenting it before an audience with some set objectives in mind.
In the ninth essay, we move onto Africa to meet the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. This again is an introductory piece on Soyinka, heavily laden with secondary sources. One feels that Ahmed should have taken the trouble to translate some of the long excerpts that he has cited, keeping his nonnative readers in mind.
The penultimate essay travels to a different continent North America. Here, Ahmed looks at the pros and cons of Miller's so-called immorality. This completes Ahmed's tour of world drama. It is a refreshing experience indeed. Specially, Ahmed's language is simple yet laden with high seriousness. His perspective and voice is of a pluralist who has adopted different critical tools ranging from Marxism to psychoanalysis, feminism to stylistics. At the end of the book, however, one longs to see the non-existent appendix, listing all the books and sources that Ahmed has referred to or quoted. Also, those little magazines or theatre publications should have been named with due credit where these essays were initially published. Surely, Natyakatha: Dur O Kachher would have been a great handy reference book with such reference list. This meager criticism does not intend to vitiate the merit of the book. Ahmed deserves thanks for opening up a whole gamut of the theatre world.
The reviewer is Assistant Professor of English, Jahangirnagar University.