JUTA ABISKAR Text Rabindra Nath Tagore Drama Design Music Conception & Direction : Raja Bhattacharya Production : Blank Verse A. SYNOPSIS The play “ Juta Abiskar “ is based on a poem of the same name by Sri Rabindra Nath Tagore . Once upon a time in a kingdom one day the king wake up with a thought . A thought that why his feet is getting covered by dust as soon as he keeps his feet down on the earth . He orders his counsels to solve the problem . The puzzled counsels does not come up with any practical solutions . The king ,heart broken at not getting a way out curses his counsels . The pandits, Mantri tries to sweep out the dust from the kingdom unsuccessfully . Secluding the King into a locked room only paved to lawlessness . After much non-sense struggle to keep the King’s feet clean going in vain the royal guards “Lojen” and “Biskut” goes out searching for a cobbler and returns with an old , bearded man .His name “Baba Mustafa” a cobbler . He was asked to cover the entire earth with leather so that the King can walk properly without getting dusty . Baba Mustafa was a wise man and not like the King’s Counsels who only had “degrees” but not brains . Baba Mustafa suggested the King that if his feet is covered by leather then the problem will be solved . Thus was invented Shoe or “Juta” . After the invention Mustafa requested the King to grant him the inventor’s status . But the King and his counsels disrespected him saying that they knew the “solution” before hand igniting a question among the audience : “Who are the actually educated , intelligent people in our society ?” B. DIRECTOR’ S NOTE a. THE TASK We tried to touch the unexplored field where elders are performing for kids, children are chosen to be the target audience. Besides, the parents can find back their childhood in watching their once forgotten favorite being staged. In this play we worked on a poem by Rabindra Nath Tagore . Dramatizing a poem was itself a new thing to happen . We also incorporated various folk forms like gaji gaan , baul gaan , the “opera” style of performing(Western Musical) in terms of acting and choreographs .The character of “Sutradhar” was stylized on “Jokery” a very vibrant performing art . The initiative was to create a different form of theatre performance where East meets the West . We conducted several workshops on “mime movements” , “Jokery” , “opera acting “ , Eastern and Western Dances , Folk musics for our actors . We are trying hard to rediscover that face and also to revere the most jolly and remarkably delightful genre of Bengali literature.  b. THE PROCESS Sharing the truth, as the great Stanislavski goes on, that an actor should love the art in him/herself and should not him/herself in the art, we, throughout this six-month-progression, have just enchanted only one thing: the process is important , not the actors. Though we have had a pack of good actors, yet often the process has made them and vice versa. Taking the freedom of theatre, certain new themes have been incorporated, when some portions, eliminated, of-course maintaining a strict vigil to keep the omissions within negligible limit. Dialogues have sprouted out form the mundane world, with obvious ease and innocence, sprinkling the essence of lullaby. On the contrary, the characters have been enriched their gait and words with the qualities of folktales. None of them is drawn form any fairyland, but their existence is very palpable within our reach, alive in our well-known mortal world, form the different sects of society as per their class identification. We structured “ JUTA ABISKAR “ as a play which is rich in its folk content and also assimilate the Western performing forms brilliantly to present the audience a colorful canvas . The Social Discrimination being the core theme of both the poem and the play was presented in a humorous way but the questions it raised against the “so called” intelligent and educated class were sharp as an arrow head . C. REHEARSAL   The production has taken almost 70days of rigorous rehearsal to be completed. The process also comprises a long-term workshop on acting, folk forms of Bengal and music. The place given by Niva Arts has endowed us with full comfort and freedom to work on. The actors, the musicians, the resource persons have taken excessive load to accomplish the task. D. PREMIERE The production of ‘JUTA ABISKAR ‘ has been premiered on 4th July, 2008 at 6.30pm at Tapan Memorial Hall at the joint initiative of Niva Arts and Blank Verse. . CAST & CREW a. ON STAGE   Casts Raja Habuchandra Mandira Bannerjee Mantri Gobuchandra Anirban Basu Baba Mustafa Dipak Mitra Parshwachar Paramananda Ghosh Lojen Sudipto Saha Biskut Prabir Das Parishad1 Sangeeta Ghosh Parishad2 Ambarish Das Pandit Rumah Paul Maha Pandit Aniruddha Dasgupta Chhatra Dhar Debojit Mukherjee Anjam Krishnendu ghosh Gaji Raja Bhattacharya Sutradhar Sayaak Chakraborty Gayak Mrinal Kanti Nath Badak Pallab Das Royal Cat Aratrika Ghosh Chorus Krishnendu Ghosh , Ambarish Das , Rumah Paul , Saayak Chakraborty , Aniruddha Dasgupta , Debojit Mukherjee , Sangeeta Ghosh , Paramananda Ghosh Musicians Violin Nanda Kishore Das Flute Gautam Goswami Dholak Pallab Das Harmonium Krishnendu Ghosh, Percussion Anirban Basu, Krishnendu Ghosh, Paramananda Ghosh, Aniruddha Dasgupta   b. OFF STAGE   Music Indraneel Majumdar Light Susanto Mondal & Manoj Prosad Make up Aloke Debnath Costume Raja Bhattacharya Stage Making Ajit Roy Assistance Gautam Basak, Arnab Paul, Rupa Bhattacharya. Debts Niva Arts, Tower Infotech Ltd. Shree Arun Gupta. Drama, Music Conception, Design & Direction: Raja Bhattacharya