A revival of the late Badal Sircar's play Teesveen Shatabdi places key players of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki nuclear bombings in the examination box to look at the repercussions of their action on future generations
A revival of the late Badal Sircar's play Teesveen Shatabdi places key players of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki nuclear bombings in the examination box to look at the repercussions of their action on future generations
For newbie theatre director, Avneesh Mishra, working on a sombre play for his second attempt at a stage presentation does not seem like an unusual idea. Mishra assures us that his purpose of doing theatre is to make his audience think and not get them to buy tickets by the dozen to fill up the auditorium. Rangshila Productions' first play, Refund, was a comedy with a strong social message on the current state of education. Continuing with the same purpose, the decision to revive the late Badal Sircar's play Teesveen Shatabdi (written in the '60s) seems plausible.
Tom Alter plays the character of Dr Albert Einstein
In Sircar's play, a young man decides to recall people who played a crucial role in the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the dead. He wants to examine what made them take such actions. "Sharad believes that a thousand years later, in the 30th century, people who are alive will look back and hold us responsible for causing havoc on the planet," explains Mishra, who first worked on the play while still in college.
He remembers that when he was in college the country was plagued by terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir. Over the years, the menace of terrorism has grown wider and there is a very real possibility of nuclear weapons falling in the wrong hands. "The first nuclear attack started off a deadly arms race and today we're sitting on a ticking bomb. But how many of us know about the events that led up to or the people who were involved in making and dropping of theu00a0 bombs," the director questions, prompting us to jog our memory for the data we mugged up in school.u00a0
The cast of the play includes accomplished actors like Tom Alter (who plays Dr Albert Einstein) and Sudhir Pandey (who plays Dr Arata Osada) among others. Working with the two theatre veterans has been an enriching experience for Mishra. "Actors like Tom Alter and Sudhir Pandey don't just concern themselves with their characters in the play but they're also very socially aware. They genuinely feel for the society and how the arts can affect an individual's opinion." Watch this one for a rare, genuinely eye-opening experience.
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On: Today, 6 pm
At: Experimental Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point.
Call: 22824567
Blast from the past
The play includes character sketches of real people who were directly related and/or affected by the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From Dr Albert Einstein, whose formula e=mc2 became the foundation for the nuclear bomb, to Dr Arata Osada, who collected school essays, written in 1950 by children of Hiroshima, that provide a subjective view of young people caught up in a cataclysmic event and its aftermath. 
Sudhir Pandey plays the character of Dr Arata Osada
There is also a look at people like Cheshire, who led the fleet of planes that dropped the bombs, Aneman Kawaguchi, who witnessed the bombings on ground, Mrs Etherley, the wife of Claude Etherly, one of the pilots responsible for dropping the bomb, among others.
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