Bangla Night in Pleasanton

Here I am with Sukanya Sarkar, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sarkar, and Ranjita, a friend of Sukanya's. Photo by Mickey.

It was festive tonight in Pleasanton, at The Bengali Theater Festival, now in its 5th year. Organized by Sanskriti, a San Francisco Bay Charitable Organization. Lucky me! I was invited to the Amador Theater by Sukanya Sarkar, who played Disha, the Indian woman living in New York who comes back to India to visit her sister, Anu, a depressed college dropout played by Tania Bhattacharya, in the play, "Anwesha," which is also about their father, a brilliant college mathematics professor, Bibhas. Once he dies, all hell breaks loose... a math student, Prabal, discovers a notebook with a mathematical theorem and assumes it was the professor's. Then, it turns out it may have been Anu's. The play was translated from the English, but the program doesn't list the author. It's an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play “Proof” by David Auburn. Directed by Rajkumar Ray.

I followed the bones of the play, as I do not speak Bangla. Mostly, I enjoyed seeing Sukanya's performance. (She and I played nuns in "The House of Blue Leaves" several months ago.)

The last play of the evening was "Jodi Arekbar" by playwright Badal Sarkar, directed by Sukalpa Biswas.There are children and dance and phantasmagoric elements in this one, with a plot about complex intimacies.

Lots of kids in the audience, too, and lots of running around in the theater and chatting during the performance. Some slow-going scenes in the final play would take a lot of concentration on the audience's part.

Souvik Das and Sukanya Sarkar

Tania Bhattacharya and Sukanya Sarkar

Sukanya Sarkar

Photos by Lisa Carlson