Interview - Sharmila Biswas on Manodarpan: Reflections of Life - Shveta Arora

I watched Guru Sharmila Biswas' thought-provoking 'Manodarpan: Reflections of Life' at Kamani in Delhi on 14 December and immediately wanted to talk to her about it. Sharmila Biswas is one of India's most renowned and much awarded senior Odissi exponents, responsible for some of the most lyrical, conceptually rich and intellectually stimulating Odissi productions I have watched over the years.

'Manodarpan' was no different, based on Natya Shastra shlokas and highlighting the various dramatic elements in performing arts in the context of bhava rasa. It presented how the Natya Shastra reveals the rasas that tell human stories of human experiences - anger, love, lamentation, power. The music direction was by Rajeswari Ganguly and it was performed by Sharmila Biswas, Krishnendu Saha, Koushik Das, Dipjoy Sarkar, Biswajit Mondal, Raaginni Hindocha and Saity Dey.

In this conversation, Sharmila Biswas narrated how, like many of the interesting productions toured in the last two years, this one too emerged from artistic endeavours initiated during the COVID-19 lockdown that were not intended to be for performance. She elaborated on the interpretation of rasas (eight, not nine), stagecraft and aharya, angik and vachik, and how learning and immersion are critical to the development of her productions.

Ashtarasa, not navarasa
Sharmila Biswas explained that the production used an early interpretation of the rasa in the Natya Shastra, in which shanta was not considered a rasa humans could produce.

It was actually ashtarasa, not navarasa, because the first rasa theory in the Natya Shastra talked about eight rasas, not considering shanta. They thought that shanta was total neutrality, so there was no rasa in it and it is not something that any human can show. So, it was ashtarasa. 

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.