From poetry to theatre

Bijoylakshmi Barman's facial expressions and honest involvement in acting earned her great applause from the audience.

Bijoylakshmi Barman is now in Dhaka participating with her group Gandhar in the ongoing festival organised by the theatre group Natyajan. Gandhar has staged two shows of its drama Charduar, in which Barman plays a major role. In addition, Barman has performed two shows of her solo acting Jara Brishtite Bhijechhilo, the theatrical adaptation of poet Joy Goswami's poetical novel of the same name.

Bijoylakshmi Barman's first ever performance on stage in 1985 was a remarkable event. She was doing a role in the play Dashchakra, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People. Besides it was her maiden forte, she performed with the legendary actor of Indian theatre Shambhu Mitra in that drama. Moreover, the show was a funds raiser for the tornado victims of Urir Char in Bangladesh thus achieving a moral value.

Bijoylakshmi Barman later joined Gandhar in 1997. With the group her first production is Charduar, a Bangla version of a Marathi drama. Eminent actor-director Meghnad Bhattacharya gave Gandhar the original Marathi play. Barman recalls how the play was then converted into Bangla. 'With a Marathi lady whom we called Tara'di, who had good knowledge of Bangla, we translated the play in 15 days. Then Meghnad edited the script.'

Later, however, Bijoylakshmi Barman had to remain away from the stage for two years due to some unavoidable circumstances. But when she came back, she did it with confidence and excellence with her solo performance Jara Brishtite Bhijechhilo.

The play is a narrative of the story of sufferings and frustrations of a girl. The play presents the girl with an ordinary middle class background and wedded into another such household, telling those sad stories. Like all other middle class housewives, she is also accustomed to accept her fate without protest since her early age. The fatherless girl lived with her mother and younger sister in the family of her uncle who used to exploit the helplessness of the three women and always reminded them that they were at his mercy.

In that suffocated life, however, the girl found solace in a young boy. While others used to look at her with eyes of nasty greed, this 'mute' boy whose name she never knew gave her a kind of tranquil of the mind. The girl had a few other refuges too. She made friends with trees, or a tune of her childhood days. She found solace in the cool of the bathroom, the lone balcony or the terrace. She dreamt about a life free from all these sufferings and embarrassment.

A brief period of emancipation then comes into the girl's life as she goes to live with her maternal aunt's house. But after her marriage, which takes place very shortly, the girl gets fettered again--by her husband and the in-laws now. Even after ten years of marriage, the girl cannot have a baby because of the husband's impotency, which only adds to her mental torture. The plight gets even more unbearable when she learns from an old friend about her husband's infidelity. But she cannot establish her flawless position in the patriarchal society.

At such a moment of mental torment she decides to abandon the life in that family and live that of her own. The sudden win over her situation has been depicted in the narrative of the play quite symbolically. The narration is mostly in the third person except that towards the close of the drama the tone shifts almost unnoticeably to the first person. This shift marks all the changes--the girl's gaining self-confidence and self-respect, her revolt against all suppressing social doctrines, and most importantly her emancipation.

The suggestive stage props used in the play enhanced the symbolic sequences of the story. A few strings tied from ceiling to the floor and throwing light on it create an artistic projection of moonlight on the window. Especially, in the final scene Barman's body language creates an aesthetic rhythm with the lights projected on her, the whole composition giving life to her newly found emancipated self.

Barman's adept control over voice and tone, her facial expressions and, above all, her honest involvement into acting earned her great applause from the audience.

Jara Brishtite Bhijechhilo is Barman's only solo performance so far. She however does not make any differentiation between group acting and solo acting. 'The basic concept of theatre lies in group activity,' she explains. 'The only difference between the two is that in case of solo acting there is only one character. But no one can deny the presence and continuous support of others like the stage designer, light designer, director and everyone in the whole team.'

Bijoylakshmi Barman believes that through theatre it is possible to come close to the ordinary people. She highly values the charitable possibilities of the medium.