Raja Bhattacharya – If I were a King

Who the hell I am?

No stolen word can describe me. Often I find myself an omnipotent playwright or writer whom the TIME could not judge. Alas! Pity on TIME. If you want to really read me as a person, find graffiti in the broken walls of your socio-political arena. They are mine. Time changed me a lot. Once I dreamt of being the most powerful artist of the TIME. My words, my sketches, my plays, my acting – all are meant for one certain destination – to be politically correct.

Enough with compromise & compromising ! It’s the time to wake up. Let’s keep some lessons for TIME.

Theatre

I became the most famous Bengali director-playwright in one single night. Hutch Odeon presented the premier of my FURRUT on 1 July 2006 at Rabindra Sadan. And, the journey begins thus and a new group, BLANK VERSE emerged with immense possibility. Yes, FURRUT has become history. It has broken all the equations of Bengali stage. I can assure you that Bengali stage has never seen such musical political comedy that attracts children, with its mesmerizing fantasy, whereas their older counterparts get something tongue in cheek very much. After this, there is no looking back…

Acting

It is a long journey from my childhood. Actually, ‘acting’ is the primal force that has fetched me into theatre. And it has been keeping me into theatre for the long 25 years.
In my schooldays, as every kid participates in school programs, I took part in a self-directed mess, a piece from Tagore’s Dakghar. The endeavor was a big failure as we the two tiny actors were in standard three, having no teacher to instruct.

Acting Training

It is a long journey from my childhood. Actually, ‘acting’ is the primal force that has fetched me into theatre. And it has been keeping me into theatre for the long 25 years.

Children Theatre

Learning from children is the best way of education. We, who are trying to honor this very genre of theatre called ‘Children Theatre’ , actually want to get educated from them. I have spent more than 20 years with children, I saw them grow in theatre, and simultaneously saw theatre to grow with and within themselves. The PROCESS is actually for breaking EGO [the arch enemy of an actor/artist], providing us with a parallel education which is both interpersonal and intrapersonal.

Literature

18 May 2003, I won the challenge of ending a contributory novel [which was commenced by Sunil Ganguly], CHHAYA ANUGAMI in Rabibasariya of Anandabajar Patrika. That brought me immense confidence to find a refuge in words. And thus the story began.

Literature is that alternative SPACE where I can roam without any help from others. So, as I read, I write. Most of the intense moments of my life are the duration when I get engrossed with my story, the plots, the lines, the rhymes and the characters I have made. They make me write for themselves.

Illustrations & Designs

In my childhood, as a kid of a middle class Benglai family, I was also deposited in an art school. Though , before that my parents found my knack in the same, and so, my destiny got fixed. But within three years L lost interest in art, and after a dark toil with ownself, I quit.

Actually, those schools are still enough to de-art a child with all sorts of pragmatic conventions. Art is just the opposite, I think, and here is the paradox. Letter, I found an extensive interest in making cartoons, illustrations, sketches, designing posters & pamphlets. And, honestly, theatre helped me a lot to break the conventions.

Music

I have grown up in Music. There was no class discrimenation. From Md. Rafi to Kabir Suman, from Debabrata Biswas to Salabat Mahato, from Madan Mohan to Shantanu Moitra, form Shiv Kumar Sharma to Mozart – there is an unfathomable ocean in which I plunged, I float, I merge, I die for…

Apart from having mastered in making parody, I make music for my own plays. As the lyrics are mine, it is easy to compose and deconstruct tunes to the great extent of extracting theatre from it. I love to do it.

Films

Once upon a time, directors used to look for actors on stage. But nowadays, actors have to struggle to get noticed. My struggle is somehow the same. But directors like Buddhadeb Dasgupta, being the master of that old school, gave me the chance to share screen with Nawajuddin Siddiqi, providing me an interesting role in Anwar Ka Ajab Kahani. The film has at last been released in an OTT. But my struggle is still on. Because, today’s directors seldom go through theatre.

If you love your wife, you can also love your girlfriend. Though, the theory is mine, but people who have mastered the art of extra-marital relationship, they will appreciate my philosophy. So to my love for advertising. I found some similarities between both theatre and advertising. Both are demanding creativity, need new ideas, and can comprise everything under the sun. The universe is the syllabus here, and LIFE is the examiner. And thus, both my love coexists…in my life.