Yesterday, I was helping Kaberi and friends stage their first Online Sahithyasabha . We postponed the start by half an hour (compared to what I had announced in my blog post last weekend) as it would otherwise have been very early for Debangana, Irabati and Suparno to perform from Texas. The other performers were in…
Category: Theatre
About theatre: performances I’ve directed, performances I’ve seen, performances I’ve heard about …
Online Sahityasabha
Every Tuesday evening in Santiniketan, the home town of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, he established the tradition known as Sahityasabha (“literary gathering”) for children studying at Patha Bhavan. It is a performance at which schoolchildren are invited to perform their own creations, including works by Tagore, based on recommendations from their teachers. This is how…
A virtual performance
When the lockdown prevented us from celebrating Tagore’s birth anniversary at Shakespeare’s Birthplace as in previous years, we created a virtual performance.
Watch Tagore’s dance-dramas for free this weekend
Many of us around the world are in lockdown at the moment due to the coronavirus pandemic. So Kaberi and I thought we should share some of Tagore’s humanity and help people celebrate the Bengali New Year (on April 14) at home by making these films available for free this weekend.
Celebrating Tagore’s educational philosophy
For this year’s celebration of the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, we chose to highlight Tagore’s educational philosophy.
A special Tagore anniversary
A version of this post first appeared on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust blog on 9 May 2013. 7 May 2013 was the 152nd anniversary of the birth of the Bengali creative genius and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. This year is also the centenary of Tagore winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. We celebrated the occasion at Shakespeare’s…
Two Bards’ birthdays
On April 23, (with a little help from our friends AJ and Melissa Leon) people all over the world celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday. Those who used Twitter to wish Shakespeare a Happy Birthday included Stephen Fry, Arianna Huffington and Geri Halliwell. Shakespeare’s birthday is certainly one I cannot miss, since it happens to be my birthday too….
A tribute to a Tagorean spirit
Ranajit Roy was renowned and widely respected for his integrity. His father, Shibdas Roy, was one of the early students at the school Tagore founded in Santiniketan. Thanks to being a very good singer, Shibdas Roy became one of Tagore’s favourite students and, later, an honorary teacher at the China Bhavan, teaching English to Tibetan monks. The family used to live in their ancestral home in Moukhira, about 18km from Santiniketan.
Tagore’s Gitanjali in 13 European languages
In my previous post, I wrote about the world premiere of the third and final film of our Tagore dance film trilogy: Chitrangada. The first half of the evening was a performance of The Story of Gitanjali . This included poems from Tagore’s English Gitanjali recited in 13 European languages and the corresponding Tagore songs performed by Manini Mukhopadhyay, Sayan Bandyopadhyay and Kaberi Chatterjee, with Asit Ghosh on tabla and Tirthankar Roy on esraj. I narrated and directed the show.
A Tagore evening to remember
As you will have realised, last Sunday was the world premiere of Chitrangada in Brussels. The English-subtitled version of the film is now available worldwide via the Internet. Before midnight on Sunday, 28 October, if you watch it or host a screening of it for friends or for people in your area, you can be part of…