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70 years of ‘1984’: Staging dystopia

LiveMint, Jun 28, 2019

Last year in January, the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in Delhi hosted a unique multilingual play titled Bundelkhand Ki Virgin Machhliyan, a love story set in a dystopian world, after its first run in Mumbai. The play, directed by Mumbai-based Sharmistha Saha, is based on the 1972 novel by Bengali writer Lokenath Bhattacharya, titled Babughater Kumari Maachh..."

Vintage character, modern drama

The Hindu, Jun 21, 2019

‘A recent news report concerned Pradip Kalubhai Rathod, the young Dalit boy killed for owning and riding a horse in his village. Sharmistha Saha’s new play, Romeo Ravidas and Juliet Devi, which is still to be widely seen, takes off from this tale, and that of Shankar and Kausalya, an inter-caste couple from Tamil Nadu. Shankar, who was killed in what became a 'viral' honour killing, provided the reference for Selvam’s character in Valavane’s play. Saha’s play might have a title that signals yet another romance, but it is an excursion into the country’s heart of darkness, scratching a wound that refuses to heal.’

Romeo, Juliet and their caste

The Mid-Day, Feb 26, 2019

Romeo Ravidas loved horses. When he requested his father to buy him one, he was offered the more enticing option of riding a Bullet motorcycle instead. Romeo was adamant; his father had to give in. Days later, Romeo was murdered. He belonged to a Dalit family, and owning a horse was against the social sanction in his village.

This is a fictional account — as far as the name goes. That such an episode could happen in the India of 2018 stumped theatre director and researcher Sharmistha Saha when she read about the fate of the horse-loving 21-year-old, Pradip Kalubhai Rathod, in Timbi, Gujarat.

A solo performance: Bharati Perwani will be seen acting in, as well as directing Weekend

DNA, May 15, 2018

While Bharati Perwani has acted in a number of plays, Weekend marks her debut as a director. The actor from the Mumbai-based collective Qissa Kothi, has adapted Nirmal Verma’s famous trilogy Teen Ekant, which conveys the innermost thoughts of a woman, who is bound by the thread of solitude. She tells us more about the play and her performance...

Her Letters, a play based on a short story by Tagore, explores themes of domesticity, love between women

First Post, May 10, 2018

In the year 1914, literary master and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote a short story in Bengali called Streer Patra, an epistolary tale of a woman who walks out of her marriage, while outlining what it means to be a woman in early 19th century India. For that day and age, Tagore’s characters were revolutionary and feminist in thought, challenging and questioning the role of a woman in domestic spaces, marriage, and how inequality towards women was ingrained in society. More than a 100 years later, not much has changed for women, feels theatre director Sharmistha Saha, who has produced a modern stage production called Her Letters, with Tagore’s story as the basis...

Bringing Tagore to stage

Hindustan Times, May 05, 2018

Always considered radical for his time, Rabindranath Tagore penned Streer Patra (The Wife's Letter) in 1914. The short story unfolds as an epistolary expressing a woman's plight post her marriage where she is confined to the four walls of her new home where she has to follow the rules unquestioningly and has no say whatsoever in any matter. The extremely powerful dialogues and unwavering storyline is what made playwright Sharmistha Saha adapt the work for her play, Her Letters....

‘Video is a part of theatre’

DNA, March 10, 2018

Chiara Crupi is visiting India for the first time and she is clearly excited about it. The filmmaker, based in Italy and Denmark, has worked with different companies directing live multimedia events, creating multimedia projects, documentaries, short films, promotionals, theatre performances and so on. She will be conducting workshops in filmmaking for theatre in Mumbai. She says that her knowledge of Indian films and theatre comes from university studies. “I have seen the work of some groups who study Indian traditional dances in Italy, and I have also seen some Indian performances in Denmark. But I don’t know the practical scenario of theatre and films in India today. I would like to know more,” she says. Chiara tells us more about the workshops she is going to conduct...

Recasting Tagore

India Today, Feb 03, 2018

Indian artists tend to treat the celebrated work of Rabindranath Tagore with kid gloves. But in adapting the master's 1914 Bengali short story Streer Patra, the Mumbai-based collective Qissa Kothi has taken a bold, and mostly successful, approach. Tagore's tale is a first-person narrative, framed as a letter in which a woman explains, with quiet resolve, why she has left home. But in playwright-director Sharmistha Saha's able hands, it becomes an intense two-person performance in Hindi, Her Letters, which comes to Mumbai's Kala Ghoda Festival on February 5 after performances in New Delhi last month.

The importance of dramaturgical design

The Hindu, January 09, 2018

A man in all-black production attire shoots an audience with a camcorder in an almost lackadaisical manner. The footage is instantaneously projected on a large screen behind, in grainy black and white. There is the slightest of time-lags, and that unavoidable hand-held shakiness. Of course, the video is slightly less fluid than in real life (techies can blame that on the frames per second), and it is strangely voiceless. The sound is switched off, and that’s deliberate, but the silence is peculiar because the audience itself is in the midst of the very live action that the video seeks to capture and stream in real time. At Bandra’s Cuckoo Club, where the play, Bundelkhand ki Virgin Machhliyan, is being staged, we hear the shuffling of feet, whispers and coughs, even giggles.

Sharmistha Saha

November 23, 2017

The theatre universe is getting ready to redefine storytelling and ways of showcasing ideas using augmented reality and virtual reality; Rasa Aur Drama catches up with a Mumbai based theatre group who try to experiment with the traditional way of storytelling which has turned out to be riveting. Qissa Kothi is a Mumbai based theatre group and they use alternate space to showcase their play and has so far made a great impact on the audience with their first show. ”We wanted our audience to be close to our performance….” says the director Sharmistha Saha.

A Play Based On Lokenath Bhattacharya's Novel, Looks At The Sinister World Through A Comical Lens

Mid-Day, November 19, 2017

It's a story that needs to be told -- reflective of the current times, Bundelkhand ki Virgin Machhliyan is based on the novel The Virgin fish of Babughat by Bengali writer Lokenath Bhattacharya. The story is set in a concentration camp where all the luxuries of life are available, including abundance of sex. However, no one has choices here.

Asia Art Archive and Inlaks India Foundation are pleased to announce Sharmistha Saha as the grantee for the AAA–Inlaks Art Grant 2017–2018

Matters of Art, September 11, 2017

Made possible through the collaboration between Asia Art Archive in India and Inlaks India Foundation, the jury selected one proposal for the year-long grant after the open call in June-July 2017. The jury this year included the Mumbai-based collaborative studio CAMP and the Delhi-based art theorist and educator Santhosh S., along with members of Asia Art Archive and Inlaks. Saha’s grant will begin on September 1, 2017.

A modern adaptation of a Tagore story talks about domestic violence

Hindustan Times, February 23, 2017

A modern adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s 1914 short story, Streer Patra, dwells on issues of domestic violence and inland migration

Sharmistha Saha was a theatre student at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, when the 2012 Delhi rape incident happened. “My friends went for the protest march at India Gate and were lathi charged. I was not able to do anything but follow the news on YouTube,” says Saha. Around that time, she read Rabindranath Tagore’s 1914 short story, Streer Patra (A Wife’s Letter).

HT Cafe, February 20, 2017

A Rabindranath Tagore’s short story, Streer Patra, is a series of letter written by its protagonist, Mrinal. In the original piece, Mrinal write a letter to her husband for the first time after being married to him for last 15 years.