Santanu Ghatak, Shaun Williams and Asmit Pathare during a rehearsal

Presented by the Playpen Performing Arts Trust, The Bose Legacy — "Inked Through Letters" features performative readings by Asmit Pathare, Santanu Ghatak and Shaun Williams, who are essaying the role of the three Bose men. Putting the event together took the team four months, but it was all stitched together with a year of research that entailed meeting the author in Calcutta. The book is a 300-pager and so, the play had to be constructed based on the essential elements. With events viewed through his lens, Amiya's character turns narrator. "Considering that this family has a national stature, the narrative expands to a lot more than their relationship as a family. At the same time, you can see how during the freedom struggle, Sarat and Subhas were trying to mould the youth in their family to take charge," co-writer Himali Kothari says.

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Although the story is told via performative readings, director and co-writer Nikhil Katara states that it infuses all the elements of a play: props, costumes, movement and set. "While our homes are private spaces, theirs at Woodburn Park was not. That's our setting and we'll have a chest on stage as a metaphor for legacy. Then there's a wooden desk and chair — a majority of Sarat's editorials were written on them from his residence. We're also going to have a stack of books to just symbolise all that they've read," he says.

Nikhil Katara

Soundscape artist Keith Sequeira will be creating the mood for the event through instrumentation and vocals depending on the changing setting — a plane crash or imprisonment, for instance. The writers hope to take the show to more places in the future, especially Kolkata. And given how historical facts can be twisted according to the political climate, Katara asserts that given the format of the play, the onus of interpretation is put on the audience; they form a direct relationship with the author.

ON Today, 7.30 pm
AT St Andrew's Centre for Philosophy and Performing Arts, St Dominic Road, Bandra West.
LOG ON TO bookmyshow.in
COST Rs 300

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