Calcutta) from Ajitesh Banerjee and at the Eugene O'Neill Theater
Center, and Richard Schechner, as a former member of East Coast
Artists, in the USA. He is the author of fifteen plays in Bengali and
English. He has directed several plays including Nuraldeen’s Lifetime
(by, Syed Shamsul Haq), Girish Karnad's Hayavadana, Badal Sircar's
Bhoma and J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and its
Bengali adaptation Birpurus. His first anthology of Bengali plays,
Abhiropan, was published in January 2005. In 2006 he directed
Manjula Padmanabhan's Harvest at the Department of Theater,
Dance, and Performance Studies, in U.C. Berkeley, where he is
currently teaching as an Assistant Professor. He is also a film-maker
and singer.
Suman Mukherjee has done productions ranging from European
drama to major adaptations of Bengali masterpieces. Among which are
Teesta Paarer Brittanto (Tales of the River Teesta, adapted from a
novel by Debesh Roy) and Mephisto, based on Klaus Mann’s German
novel, Ariane Mnouchkine stage adapatation and Istvan Szabo's film
version of it. While Teesta... has become one of the most celebrated
productions of the Bengali stage, Mephisto was staged in protest
against the religious riots of 2002 that led to a state-supported
genocide of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat. Suman is currently
working with a group of theater directors in Europe on a collaborative
project. In 2005, he directed Girish Karnad's Nagamandala (Play with
Cobra) at Kalamazoo College. Earlier in 2005, Suman also completed
his first feature film, Herbert, based on a novel of the same title by
Nabarun Bhattacharya, which is currently being screened at various
international venues. He is at present the Artistic Director of Tritiya
Sutra Performance Company in Kolkata for whom he recently directed
Kangal Malsat (Beggar's Conference), based on a novel by Nabarun
Bhattacharya.
Soumya Chakravarti, a scientist by profession, has been in love with
folk music of Bengal for 4 decades. In addition to being an
accomplished player of several Bengali folk instruments, he is also a
singer. He has created and currently maintains www.ektara.net, a
website on Bengali and Mundari folk music. He plays the do-tara, ek-
tara, and the khamak in Man of the Heart.
Bodhisattva Das plays the tabla and other hand-drums, and has
accompanied various musicians of various genres, including Blues and
Indian folk. He also acted in and directed many amateur plays and is
currently a member of ENAD, a theater group based in Northern
California. In Man of the Heart, Bodhi (as he is known among friends)
plays the khol, the dhol, and the naal, the basic percussion
instruments in Bengali folk music.
