Probir Guha’s plays have always touched a raw nerve. It comes as no surprise therefore when Another Rainbow staged in Thiruvananthapuram weighed you down with a sense of despondency. Even if the name of the play gave reason to expect some candy for the eye he chose to present ‘the society that resembles an asylum and we are the frenzied lot under treatment. To us, real become fake and the fake becomes real.’
As a director schooled under the techniques of Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘poor theatre’, his productions are austere and sparse, but the actor takes centre stage, placing his skills at the core of the success of the play. There is a physicality that the actors bring to the play which speaks of discipline and skill.
Another Rainbow can best be defined as snapshots from hell, the hellish life we are consigned to, particularly of the woman in many situations. There is exhilaration in the voice that announces, “I have grown up”. The spring in her steps freezes: she confronts the ‘other’, the male-aggressive, controlling, vested with power of the patriarchy - the countenance changes to a dull, morose, apprehensive one.
From there on Guha begins to track the many kinds of violence on the woman, including the gleeful ‘gang of four’ on the morning after of a gang rape. The actors on stage successfully recreate the violence of the perpetrator and how it impinges on the victim.
The director draws on the image of Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ who brings the wrath upon herself by going counter to what she had been asked to refrain from. Keeping within the proscriptive confines is the perennial demand that is made, he proclaims through this image he constructs before us.
There are thought provoking one-liners during the course of the play – ‘Sapna hai abhi bhi’ (dreams are still alive), or, ‘asafalta ek chunauti hai’ (failure is a challenge). Nobody shows the path, you have to chose the path, yet in all the gloom and the avalanche of woes that shadow human existence it is hope and the human ability to rise and react that induces life with an energy.
While a major segment of Another Rainbow dwells on the ‘woman’, he has trailed the hollowness of present times, the mad rush to keep themselves alive. There is that constant question –why this haste? He gives you the answers too: roti, roti-dal, ghar, gaadi, motorbike….the list is unending, so also this mad rush!
For Probir Guha, “alternative living and political theatre’’, the proscenium is his space for the theatre of protest, theatre of the have-nots and theatre of the marginalised. The hour-long multilingual (Bengali-Hindi-English) play was no sugar–coated pill. The success of a production of this kind hinges as much on the seed idea, its execution and its delivery.
On the last input it must be said the conviction of the actors enhanced the quality of the play. The music by Subhadeep Guha and the minimal use of props that had their defined role within the context lent more vitality to the play.
