Image Credit: Siva Prasad Marar

The trajectory of contemporary Assamese theatre is marked by eclectic experiments that has produced both original and a substantial body of adapted plays. Adaptation is not a new phenomenon in the context of Assamese theatrical scenario. Ratnadhar Baruah, Ghanashyam Baruah, Gunjanan Baruah and Ratnadhar Barkakati translated William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors into Bhramaranga in 1887-89. This translation, by changing the characters and place and by infusing a local cultural context as far as settings and colloquialism is concerned, gets closer to an adaptation. Here, I would like to provide a synoptic view of some of the interesting plays which show the multi-dimensionality of adaptation in contemporary Assamese theatre.

Aru Nandini (2011) by Naren Patgiri is an Assamese adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's Raktakarabi. Patgiri has brought about a number of changes while maintaining the dance drama form of the original play. Use of masks, music and song, suggestive costumes and light have enriched the imperative symbolic value of the play. Set in ‘Yakshapuri’ a mythical kingdom of matchless wealth, the play depicts the consequences of unabated human greed. The King, who has locked himself up/shunned off himself in the artifice of the golden palace, is a mere puppet in the hands of the corporate. From gold to the forests, from oil to river, almost everything under the sun, that the corporate have established their control over. Yakshapuri is a mechanised world with rigorous rules for the workers breaking of which leads to severe punishment including death. It’s a world whose policies are prepared by the corporate with the objective of enmeshing wealth by exploiting the natural and human world. It is a world devoid of human values like love and kindness. Nandini’s entry challenge the banality of Yakshapuri. She, with her message of love and beauty, led Rongmon, Gakul, Debu, Nilakhi, Chandrali and others enslaved in Yakshapuri, to the helpless self-realisation regarding the futility of their life. Nandini makes her vain attempts to set the king free from the shackles of the corporate – bureaucrat nexus by alluring him for a humane world of love and kindness. Ranjan, for whom Nandini has kept the garland of red oleanders, is considered as a messiah by Nandini who, as she imagines, could free everyone in Yakshapuri from the slavery of the corporates. The corporates, with the astute aid of Professor and Puran and military might frustrate the dream of freedom. Ranjan, the harbinger of an equal world is shot dead by the king leaving Nandini with a cry of revolt. Patgiri has been able to create a fresh context of the play by alluding the issues of Peasant revolt and the issue of big dam. The playwright sets his adaptation in the context of the political atmosphere of Assam during the first two decades of twenty first century. Assam’s political scenario has witnessed the rise of peasant leader(s) and convenient shift and change of the ‘Big River-Dam’ narrative/discourse.

Professor: How dare he to challenge the corporate!

Security officer: He is travelling across villages and organising the people against the Big River-Dam. Thousands of people have joined the revolt against the big dam

Professor: Sir, it seems that media is also giving priority to this issue. That’s why I have a suggestion. Sir, shouldn’t we stop the river dam project on the gold-yielding-river for the time being?

Corporate 1: Are you getting mad? What do you know about the gold-yielding-river?

Professor: Sir -

Corporate 1: Listen - Once some twelve thousand sonowals used to collect gold pods in this river. The king used to collect bags of gold as revenue. Why are we trying to manage the flow of that river by investing thousands of crores? Because, electric energy is more valuable than gold in today’s world. The river that used to give gold pods will give thousand megawatts of electricity. (Scene 4)

From the above exchanges it has become very much clear that the playwright is referring to the ongoing Big River-Dam project on the river Suwanshiri. Thus, the tussle between greed and beauty of Tagore’s Raktakarabi has acquired a new politico-economic dimension in Aru Nandini. This attempt has not only imbibed a contemporary sensibility to the play but also demonstrates how a text of classical stature can be (re)read and (re)told with renewed imperatives. To add local flavour to the adapted text, apart from the dress and costumes of some of the ethnic communities of Assam, Patgiri has used Assamese Bihu songs, Bagurumba dance of the Bodos and Oinitam of the Misings.

Hillol Kumar Pathak’s Oja Fanus (2010) is an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. In Pathak’s hand Mephistopheles has become ‘Mecheng’, a tribal female devil. As far as characterisation is concerned, the dramatist has kept the name of all the characters (except Faustus and Mephistopheles who become Fanus and Mecheng respectively) the same. However, the function that these characters have to perform in the play remain context dependent. By projecting a ‘she’ Mephistopheles, the playwright seems to bring in a fresh perspective regarding the ‘Power-Knowledge’ relationship in a new matrilineal context. This attempt to project Mephistopheles as a ‘she’ devil has its technical advantage also. The stage manoeuvre needed to bring in Helen out of Mephistopheles is performed with mush ease with a ‘she’ Mephistopheles.  Pathak’s adaptation is marked by a number of innovative use of local cultural clichés including the use of Oja Pali and Deodhani dance while presenting the Seven Deadly Scenes. Moreover, the Shadow Play at the end that straps the three time frames of Past, Present and Future augments the universal theme of power and repentance in the adapted version of Dr. Faustus.

Using a hoard of fishes as the chorus and by veering the focus from human to the marlin fish, Hillol Kumar Pathak’s Dhau (2014) sets a remarkable example of literary adaptation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. ‘Dhau’ literally means wave. To recreate the story of the Cuban fisherman in a new cultural context, Pathak has employed the everyday life of the fisherman communities of Assam. Santiago has become the grandfather and Manolin the grandchild in Pathak’s adaptation of Hemingway’s story. By tying up the two characters with a familial relationship the playwright has been able to bring in cultural imperatives. This has not brought fresh philosophical perspectives to the story but also helps locating the adapted text in a culture that has always revered and celebrated the relationship between grandfather and grandchildren. The marlin of Hemingway becomes Sonali Rupali Mas (lit. trans. Golden-silvery fish) in Dhau. Unlike Hemingway’s Merlin the golden-silvery fish, the most coveted prey for Grandfather, doesn't die at the end. It converses with Grandfather after being caught. This conversation, as time passes, turns into an intense philosophical debate between the two. At one point, the focus of the play shifts from Grandfather to the fish. The fish goes back to his watery abode leaving Grandfather and Grandson with some philosophical insights about life and death. Dhau is a celebration of human being's relationship with its non-human surrounding, a dramatic expression of universal human values, a metaphor of life that validates the supremacy of untiring human struggle over achievements.

Kukurnechiya (2018), literally means ‘wolf’, is Pankajjyoti Bhuyan’s Assamese adaptation of a Pashto short fiction “The Wolf” by noted Pakistani author Farooq Sarwar. For his adaptation, playwright Bhuyan took help of Dr. Swati Kiran’s Assamese translation of the story. The play, with a magic-realistic touch, depicts the mental struggle of Onal, a married man of around forty, who has been sitting on a tree for almost a year. One evening while returning from market he was allured by a beautiful woman. Following this he landed inside a jungle where a she wolf is waiting to devour him. Being frightened he climbed and finally took shelter on a big tree. The tree is a magical one that offers everything he needed, not just to survive but to live lavishly with all material comfort and lavishness. It didn't take much time for him to realise that he has everything except freedom. The wolf is still waiting for him beneath the tree and Onal doesn’t have the courage to get down and face it. During his conversations with the wolf, alluding the story of Ratnakar, he reveals the sorry state of his family life. Soon he is joined by Akriti, a woman of around thirty expecting a divorce with his husband. She took shelter on another tree while chased by another wolf. In a bid to set herself free from this prisoner’s life, she plans and eventually becomes successful also, to kill the wolf beneath her tree. Onal, encouraged by her daunting move Onal too kills the wolf. Towards the end of the play he realises that all of us are sitting on a tree beneath which a wolf is always waiting for us. The symbolically rich adaptation deals with the desire and temptations that put an average middle class into corrupt and unethical practices. The desire for more and more material gain leads us to a prison house, which, at one point of time start suffocating us. By the time we realise this fact the hope of freedom fades away. Kukurnechiya can be read as an example of a social satire located in the contemporary middle class Assamese society.

Fall of a king (2014) an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, is an attempt to portray the plight of a king exonerated from the love and care of his daughters. In reproducing the sufferings of an old man the director took help of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Dead Man Walking” and Hiren Bhattacharyya’s poem “Mor Desh.” These two poems not only act as the sub-texts of the performance but also designate new meanings to such experiences like the lack of companionship, sense of hopelessness, crisis of Identity associated with the old age. The performance begins with two characters reciting line from the poems “The Dead man Walking” and “Mor Desh”. The recital is interrupted by a gleeful pageant that enters the stage from outside the performance area. In an attempt to explore the performative dimension of the various cultural elements of  Assam, the procession is made spectacular with the playing of Bihu drums, use of masks and dance steps of Bhaona, lullabies, Husori, play songs used by children etc. along with ‘a spirit’ costumed as a mime actor. The pageant on stage replicates a society, young and gleeful and often indifferent to the elderly ones. The joy and merry making of the younger become so louder that the narration of the old couple shrinks. Every subsequent effort of the couple to narrate their lives fail and falls into oblivion. The agony and suffering of the old couple is exteriorised through the physical rendition of the ‘spirit’. The binary between an intensely personalised narration and an indifferent jubilant society sets the stage for the unfolding of Lear’s story.

As these performances attest, the field of contemporary Assamese theatre shows the blend of resources which are both eclectic in their usage and innovative in the way they combine and emerge in the various modes on the stage.