Come See How We Are Living (With a Little Help From Bertolt Brecht)

When the deadly massacre engulfed Gujarat in 2002, writers-artists-intellectuals and, most importantly, common citizens of Kolkata staged tumultuous protests. An integral part of that agitation was the staging or the dramatisation of the memorable German novel Mephisto written by Klaus Henrich Mann. The play enacted the dismal submission of the most remarkable actor of those days (1930s in Germany), Hendrik Hoefgen, to the dictates of the Nazi regime. Suman Mukhopadhyay directed the play and the actor Gautam Halder played the role of Hendrik Hoefgen. Their collaboration resulted in an outstanding theatrical production.  

The newly staged Bechara B.B. (Of Poor B.B.), which has taken Kolkata by storm, does not have a star like Gautam Halder. Suman, who is now grey-haired and a seasoned veteran, has joined hands with a bunch of young and inexperienced artistes to present a moving and intense theatre-collage.

B.B., of course, stands for the unforgettable Bertolt Brecht. This endeavour, on the one hand, pays tribute to Bertolt Brecht, undoubtedly the greatest dramatist of the last century, whose 125th birth century we are observing this year; and, on the other, depicts a chilling account of the fractured time which we experience and yet resist. Indeed, after witnessing the production,  I was prompted to recall the iconic words of the renowned poet, Sunil Gangopadhyay, “Nikhilesh, come and see how we are living.”

In a brief address to the audience before the performance began, Suman did not mince his words. He said, “I want to capture the spirit of our age and lives through Brecht’s plays with the cooperation of those green leaves. We all agree that we are passing through extremely difficult times. In fact, it has become really arduous to stage an acerbic play like this. Do try to compare our diurnal existence with what you will see on the stage – you will find many sinister similarities.” That government grants are not available for creative dissidents is known to all.

The play beings with the evergreen refrain ‘Und der Haifisch der hat Zaehne/And the shark who has devilish teeth’ from Brecht’s classic The Three Penny Opera. It is followed by the rendering of the incomparable poem Von armen B.B./Of Poor B.B. Its first stanza accompanies the dramatisation like a fragmented incantation, underlining the primordial nature of the struggle that needs to be waged against the enemy of the people:

I, Bertolt Brecht, come from the black forests.
My mother carried me into the cities
When I was in her belly. And the chill of the forests
Will be in me till my dying day.

Thereafter, a spectacular performance unfolds against an excellent backdrop, interspersed with stirring music and apposite stage sets. 

Suman has meticulously chosen celebrated scenes from the Brechtian dramatic oeuvre to establish his aesthetic-political argument. Scenes from Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (1934-38), Mother Courage and her Children (1948), Life of Galileo (1941), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941), Tales of Mr. Keuner (1958), Schweik in the Second World War (1941-44) follow one another in succession, and the audience is left awed by the sheer diversity of the presentation. 

I zero in on two plays. The first is the Bengali version of the one-act drama The Jewish Wife taken from Brecht’s play-cycle Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, which undergoes a telling metamorphosis. The Jewish wife becomes Musulmani Bibi / Muslim Wife and the German town is replaced by Gurgaon of 2023, where Hindutva stormtroopers launched a vicious attack on the minority community. In Suman’s adaptation, the Muslim wife of a Hindu Bengali doctor becomes the root of all problems. She is the proverbial ‘terrorist’ by virtue of her religion, whose presence blocks the professional advance of her husband and thwarts his social relations. Cornered and segregated, the Musulmani Bibi decides to depart. This painful enactment of separation exposes the canker of communal polarisation in our society. It underlines the divisive politics of hate that has seeped into the minds of the common people. Nafrat, as Rahul Gandhi would say.

The second collage presents numerous sequences from The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, which makes us alert and aware of our hostile as well as intolerant reality where masked autocrats strut around with impunity. The utterly malevolent harangue of Arturo Ui, read Adolf Hitler, reminds us of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s prophetic warning, “If a totalitarian hero looms over the country, the death of democracy is inevitable.” The sensitive audience immediately identifies the hero in question. But Arturo Ui meets his inevitable downfall. The final warning of Brecht, “Think about how this rabid animal has devoured us. So, be careful,” profoundly disturbs and educates the audience. While this powerful plea of the dramatist reverberates, a bunch of men and women dressed in saffron and sporting ‘tilaks’ on their foreheads assemble on the stage. Sounds of drums, chants and bells chime in and we realise the nature of the sectarian and majoritarian horror that the director is underlining. 

Interestingly, the dramatisation ends with a nod to the much-debated Brechtian tradition of alienation. Instead of being carried away by the fervently emotional content, the collage encourages the audience to maintain an intellectual distance and adopt a deeper, critical attitude. Thus, the viewer becomes a sharp analyst and he concludes that our impoverished country does not need a hero who claims ‘divine’ connection. 

Suman recognises that Brecht, careful to the core, did not believe in a  facile representation of an easily accessible, conflict-free utopia. Brecht emerged struggling from the primeval forest, he learnt how tormenting the battle could be against the forces of evil. His perception of the despair and vacuum that enveloped his reality prompted him to pronounce the following ambivalent words:

That’s why I say I do not give a damn
Just inhale from the pot
Allow the smoke to fill the air
The solution lies there
Let there be smoke everywhere 

Needless to say, this lingering pessimism is not the last word. The collage does not offer the prospect of a fantasy world lurking just round the corner. On the contrary, it attempts to etch a pitiless picture of a wounded society that certainly marks time for a genuine, redemptive transformation. 

Subhoranjan Dasgupta is a former professor of human sciences, a scholar, a columnist and an author of several books in English and Bengali.

Translated from the Bengali original by Biprajit Bhattacharya.