Beyond high fives for B-Three!
|
Bahroop's latest play "B-Three" is a whistle-blower to must be taken to colleges.
|
Bahroop is now 10-years-old and during this short period it has given us some meaningful plays that have won many awards. Its latest play "B-Three" written by Shahid Anwar and directed by Suman Kumar, like some of the playwright's earlier plays, is a whistle-blower to a society which, as he says, does not bother to provide positive alternatives or create options to its youth. Every 10-15 years or so a generation rises that utilises its energy to make its presence felt in the society. If society fails to channel this energy into something worthwhile, this force may make way for something devastating for the society itself.
Lures of fascism
"B-Three" is about regimentation of mind but "a regimentation without an appropriate social obligation is very much prone to the lures of fascism". "B-Three" unfolds the story of a history teacher, S.P. (Hadi Sarmadi) who tries to explain to his students how Hitler could manage to legitimise the genocide of Jews in a Nazi Germany despite the fact that only 10 per cent of the public was pro-Nazi! He screens a film "Night and Fog" for his students just to bring home the point that the silence of a majority could yield to catastrophe.
But the `a-historic' generation is not convinced as it is assured that Hitler and his fascism was only an aberration of history. S.P. applies an experiment with the aid of focus drill and noise drill, etc., to create an authoritarian condition of learning. His wife Anusha (Amita Rana) warns him. Swayed by the momentum of the experiment, students become an easy prey.
The only challenge to S.P. is posed by a girl student Osawari (Sharmistha Saha). Motivated by the teacher, the students form an organisation `Blackboard Brigade' (B-Three) so that they should be acknowledged as a monolithic identity. One of the students, Satsangi (Ghufran) accepts this `identity' most readily as his only aim in life is to be noticed. When Osawari's protest gets unbearable, Satsangi pushes her down from the top floor and she dies. Satsangi is arrested but he is not bothered because this time he has been noticed by the world. As a sub-plot, the playwright brings in the element of foreign capital making inroads into the affairs of academia in different ways. The principal (Abhinav Bharati) and the director of the managing committee (Amit Navendu) argue for and against such intervention of the foreign corporate giants to underline how social engineering by education gets derailed and how foreign capital ultimately protects and nurtures the transformation of a society into a fascist society. The play strikes many contemporary parallels and must be taken to colleges.
ROMESH CHANDER
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
