What connects an Indian Nobel laureate with a Polish-Jewish children's author and paediatrician? A lot, believes theatre director Sunil Shanbag as he revisits Rabindranath Tagore's iconic play Dak Ghar, in his latest production, Walking To The Sun

Sunil Shanbag's Walking To The Sun is, perhaps, his fourth play in a row, which contrasts two seemingly separate subjects on the same stage. The process began with a docu-production piece on Pandit Satyadev Dubey a couple of years ago and his last, Dreams of Taleem saw two fictional accounts off-setting each other.

Actors Satyajit Sharma, Sudhir Pandey and Manasi Rachh rehearse for
the play. Pics/ SANTOSH NAGWEKAR

In the same vein, Walking To The Sun juxtaposes Rabindranath Tagore's Dak Ghar with an incident that took place in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The only difference with Shanbag's latest offering is that in this case, fiction collides with a real-life incident.
u00a0
Tagore's Dak Ghar is about a child, Amal, who is patiently dealing with a grave illness. Halfway across the globe, in Warsaw, Poland, Dr Janusz Korczak is trying to prepare children from an orphanage to face the grim realities of the Holocaust. " It is a very moving piece. It's emotional and different from what I've been doing so far. It's got the emotion and mystical poetry of Tagore, and a very strong cerebral quality of a man like Korczak, who was a thinker. And when they come together it becomes a very interesting process," explains Shanbag, talking about his play.

The idea of re-interpreting Tagore's work was suggested to Shanbag last year by the members of a Kolkata-based group called Happenings, who organise the annual festival, Rabindra Utsav. "I wanted to work on a classic and Tagore has always appealed to me. I had to find a way of entering into the play so I was reading up material connected to it.

Somehow, I stumbled upon the amazing connection between this Jewish paediatrician and the bunch of orphans, and Dak Ghar. They live in completely disconnected worlds, yet there is a connection," says Shanbag. The play, which premiered in Kolkata in August, this year, was very well received.

Even though there is an attempt to understand Tagore differently, from a non-Bengali's perspective, certain elements like the music still play a vital part of the production. Like the storyline criss-crosses between Amal's experience and Dr Korczak's experiences, the music, created by Moushumi Bhowmik, alternates from traditional Rabindra Sangeet and Western influences. "Moushumi is a classical musician, who is also part of a group called Parapar that works on Fusion, Crossover and Western music. She was ideal because the play is also divided into a very strong Indian and European, specifically Polish, sensibilities," Shanbag states.

Don't expect typical Tagore fare at this show, watch out for a moving Indo-Western confluence, instead.

TILL October 10 at Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Vile Parle (W). Call: 26149546 Timings: October 5 to 8 at 9 pm, October 9 at 6 pm and 9 pm, October 10 at 4.30 pm and 7.30 pm

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels