Date: 16th June 2024 

Time: 6:30 pm  

Venue: KCC Amphitheatre 

Kolkata Centre for Creativity presents KCC Arts Lab 8.0 - Bechara B. B. directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay, in collaboration with Chetana & Tritiyo Sutra. The play is designed with fragments of the plays by one of the celebrated German playwrights and philosophers, Bertolt Brecht, and reflects the essence of Brecht's life, ideas, and philosophy. 

 

Bechara B.B. is a free-flowing performative exploration of Brecht’s life, ideas, politics, and dialectics. Brecht physically felt the chaos and putrid decay of his times. His images are ‘brutally sensuous’ and ‘melancholically tender’. We are impregnated with the horrors of our times and realize the fresh relevance of his political and artistic visions. This play is the outcome of KCC Arts Laboratory 8.0, which aims to support the multidisciplinary art creation by young artists of traditional and contemporary forms, by providing them with the necessary resources, support, and space for exploration and experimentation. 

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s theatre and films deal with the socio-political domain and engage in critical assessment of contemporaneity. His explorations into the subaltern realities and history have given a distinction mark to his theatre productions and filmmaking.  

He is one of India’s leading theatre directors and has done productions ranging from European drama to major adaptations of Bengali masterpieces and productions of Indian plays. His major plays are Teesta Paarer Brittanto, Mephisto, Bisarjan and King Lear. 

Suman has also directed eight full-length feature films including Nazarband (2020); Asamapta (2017); and Herbert (2005) which won the National Award for Best Regional Film that year. He participated and won awards in various national and international theatre and film festivals including Busan, Montreal, Dubai, Munich, San Francisco, Seattle, and Kerala etc. Suman has also made several documentaries, TV series, short films, and cine-plays.  He was conferred with an award from Motion Picture Association and Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Brisbane in 2017. His latest films Nazarband (Captive) had its world premiere at Busan International Film Festival and Posham Pa won an award at the Female Filmmakers Festival, Berlin in 2020. Suman taught and directed plays at UC Berkeley, University of Toledo, Kalamazoo College, and Barnard College in the USA.  He recently finished working with Columbia University, New York on a Fulbright fellowship. 

Design and Direction: Suman Mukhopadhyay, Text Edit: Debarshi Bandyopadhyay 

Music: Subhadeep Guha 

Lighting Design: Sudip Sanyal 

Audio Design: Anindya Nandy, Sound and Projection Operation: Dipesh Mukherjee 

Technical Supervision: Dipanjan Dutta 

Set Construction: Bilu Dutta 

Make-up: Md. Ali, Costumes: Sayan Majhi 

Calligraphy: Somnath Ghosh 

Production: Tausif Rahman, Production Asst.: Fazal Karim 

Translation: Bishnu De, Sankha Ghosh, Alokeranjan Dasgupta, Utpal Dutt, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, Mohit Chattopadhyay, Arun Mukhopadhyay, Ashok Mukhopadhyay, Partha Chattopadhyay, Moinak Biswas, Samir Dasgupta, Debiprasad Bandyopadhyay, Sandipan Chakraborty, Rahul Purokayasta, Debarshi Bandyopadhyay and Suman Mukhopadhyay 

Acknowledgment: Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Sumanta Mukhopadhyay, Subhojit Gupta, Sujan Mukhopadhyay 

Special Thanks to Ms. Richa Agarwal (Chairperson, Kolkata Centre for Creativity)