Theatre lovers of Kolkata had the golden opportunity of watching a retrospective on the noted stage actress Binodini Dasi from November 1 to November 4 2007 at the G.D. Birla Theatre. Academy Theatre, founded in 1984, by Dr. Devajit Bandopadhyay, organized the festival, fittingly titled Bangarangamancher Binodini. The four-day festival staged three plays by three different groups from Delhi, Kolkata and Dhaka (Bangladesh). On the concluding night, Devajit, his wife Riddhi and their eight-year-old son Riddhadev Bandopadhyay held the audience mesmerized with their theatre songs, Binodini-Kaaler Natya-Sangeet while veteran actor Soumitra Chattopadhyay read out a beautiful narration from Binodini Dasi's autobiographies - Aamar Katha (My Life) and Aamar Abhinetri Jeebon (My Life as an Actress.).

For the uninitiated, Binodini Dasi (1863-1941), more popularly known as Nati Binodini, is one of the most outstanding stage actresses of the Calcutta stage who ruled supreme for a little more than a decade (1873-1886), beginning at the tender age of eleven. Then, she quit the theatre scene when she found herself moving towards spiritualism. Once, after portraying the title role of Sri Chaitanya in the play, (the great saint who founded the Vaishnava philosophy in Bengal), Sri Sri Paramahamsa who had come to watch the play, walked up to the stage to bless her for her brilliant performance. The story goes that she would wake up early in the morning, bathe in the Ganges and would take vegetarian food during the rehearsals and the staging of Sri Chaitanya. After she quit the stage, she married a local zamindar who had waited for her for years. The couple had a daughter, Shakuntala, who died when she was 11, followed by Binodini's husband's death, leaving the cursed woman to live in a state of perpetual isolation and loneliness.

Theatre and Television Associates, Delhi, presented the first play Nati Binodini (Hindi) under the direction of Amal Allana. Allana has based the script on the English translation of Aamar Katha and Aamar Abhinetri Jeebon by Rimli Bhattacharya. It was a strikingly original presentation where five Binodinis occupied the stage at the same time. One of them plays the doddering old Binodini in the present, writing out her autobiography and often entering into a discourse with the ghost of Girish Ghosh, her teacher and mentor, the historic personality of the Bengali stage, on a wheelchair. The wheelchair is a metaphor for Ghosh whose theatre was almost crippled after Binodini left.

As the old Binodini reads out from her writings, the scene moves back to reveal four other Binodinis of different ages, dressed and made up identically, sometimes narrating the story of Binodini's life, at times enacting scenes from her plays, and at times going into depression born of a shattered life. The focus was more on the emotional and sexual exploitation of Binodini by her mother, by the first man whose mistress she was forced to be, and finally, by Girish Ghosh, than on Binodini, the actress. Ghosh persuaded her to live with Gurmukh Rai, a wealthy Marwari admirer, as his keep so that the theatre, that was about to close down, could be saved. Rejecting his offer of Rs.50, 000 outright, Binodini asked him to build a theatre. He agreed on condition that the theatre would be called B-Theatre, the "B" standing for Binodini, in celebration of her rich contribution to theatre. Yet, when the time came, the members of the group did not keep this promise. It was christened Star Theatre as it was felt that a theatre house named after a prostitute would fail to draw an audience. The split-level stage with décor and mood lighting by Nissar Allana, costumes by Amal Allana, brilliant acting especially by Swaroopa Ghosh as a slightly older Binodini and Jayanto Das as Girish Ghosh made the play a memorable experience.

Bharattirtha Jatra Samaj's jatra presentation Nati Binodini (Bengali) had soulful music and songs written, set to music and rendered beautifully by Tapasi Roy Choudhury who played the title role. The play was in the style of the folk jatra. It was based on Brajendra Kumar Dey's jatra-play of the same name. Tapasi Roy Choudhury's portrayal was self-conscious and stiff. She looked too modern and sophisticated for a period that dates back to the late 19th century and the same applies to her costume and make-up. But the supporting cast offered a brilliant performance, undercutting the lack in Roy Choudhury's acting power. The jatra used live instrumental music in keeping with the traditional jatra style of folk theatre presentation. The actor who portrayed Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was outstanding. The play suffered for its inordinate length filled with pseudo-comic episodes introduced for costume changes. The stylized acting was in keeping with the period it represented.

Bangladesh's Dhaka Theatre's Binodini (Bengali) was the most outstanding performance. Shimul Yusuf, a noted senior stage actress of Bangladesh, based her performance entirely on the original autobiographies of Binodini. She dominated the stage, beginning with a brief introduction and then stepping into the life of Binodini. Yusuf used the entire stage space in every imaginable way a performer can. She sang, danced, jumped, sprang, laughed, cried, responded and reacted to, interspersing her enactment of Binodini with that of the others - the actress' grandmother, her mother, her mentor Girish Chandra Ghosh, her keeper Gurmukh Rai, and several other characters. Minimum props placed on stage were pegs to hang her acting on - coloured chunaris to change the character/situation/location/scene with a single twist of the garment. A reclining chair here, a stool there, were enough to give her the support she needed with live musicians supporting her at the back of the stage. Nasir Uddin Yusuf directed the play. Ishrat Nisat's lighting and a fluid and flexible set design by Kamaluddin Kabir filled the blanks.

*Shoma A. Chatterji has been writing on cinema and gender for nearly three decades. She also writes on television, theatre, fine arts, human rights and does celeb profiles. She has authored 16 published books and has won two national awards, one state award, one institutional award, two research fellowships and has just submitted her Ph.D. thesis on cinema. She is 64 and is based in Kolkata. This feature was first published in Screen in November 2007.