Brand: Existentialist questions

Brand (L) persuading his followers in the play

The Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT) staged the press show of Brand at newly opened National Theatre Stage on December 18.

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's play Brand is based on the existentialist philosophy of Danish Kierkegaard and German greats Hegel and Nietschze. Brand is a cathartic writing experience for Ibsen. The protagonist Brand is a pastor who holds himself and all of his followers, including his wife, to the rigid command of 'Naught or All'! This essentially means that people must be willing to risk their lives and all earthly attachments if they wish to find eternal salvation. Brand is tested on this faith and, even though he falters a few times, he nevertheless goes the distance, sacrificing his mother, son and wife in an attempt to adhere to his beliefs. The ambiguous ending has been interpreted in many contradictory ways, including that Brand's life is either meaningful or worthless. That is why Brand can be interpreted in different ways. But, in CAT's production, Henrik Ibsen's Brand focuses on three major points--Christian and anti-Christian war, theological debate on divinity between the Old and New Testaments, and the story of an individual fighting an existential battle to identify his belief. Protagonist Brand is an intellectual fundamentalist and his role in the play is a kind of vindication of romanticism.

Brand is written in the style of a poem--a more literary but less common type of modern drama. During the translation of the play Munzur-I-Mowla has successfully handled Henrik Ibsen's original style. Moreover, he has used some references of the Old Testament such as Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son to please Jevohav, the God, Noah's boat and others during the translation.

Director as well as designer Kamaluddin Nilu has successfully used the benefit of innovative two congested perpendicular-stagecraft as the set of the play, which helped him in characterisation and directorial compositions in the play Brand. The slope of the set is quite convenient for the performers to acquire the required motion of the play. Moreover, by changing a few stagecrafts he has created a different atmosphere in the play. Using symbolic colour effects on the white set, the light designer has ably supported Nilu to complete an excellent theatrical work on the proscenium arch stage.

At the end of the play Nilu has used one of Michelangelo's painting--Christ the Virgin and Saints--from his The Last Judgement series, which portrays Jesus as a young beardless man with enormous power and energy.

Majid, an expert on Kazakh ballet, has used traditional Scandinavian folk dance for the choreography of Brand. Wonderful medieval church music compositions have been used throughout the play. The costumes of the play are based on the 19th century Scandinavian attire.

Monir Ahmed Shakil as Brand, M Shahadat Hossain as Einer and Sabina Sultana as Agnes gave superb performances to spotlight the conflict between religion, aestheticism and ethics.