One-man wonder

It definitely has been one heck of a job for Shekhar Sen, music composer, singer and now theatre actor to be staging his musical play, Kabeer. Apart from writing, directing and acting in this play that is a biographical account of the life of Kabeer, all the 46 songs in this musical have been composed by Sen, who happens to be the only actor for the play as well. 

This Lalit Kala Award winner will be showcasing the 268th staging of his play in the same city that had rejected his play before it premiered in 1998. According to Sen, he had approached Prithvi Theatre for the first staging and had been rejected as the theatre did not think that he could single-handedly pull of this mammoth project. “Since then, I never looked back with regret. My play went on to receive laurels nationally and internationally and was the first-ever mono act to be performed at the Lok Sabha.”

Sen, who was also the playback singer for Ramanand Sagar’s television series Ramayan, recalls, “I was specially invited by Somnath Chatterjee, chairperson at the Lok Sabha, to stage the play to a full house including Sonia Gandhi and prime minister Manmohan Singh.”

Sen points out that most plays in the city are commercial entertainers that revolve around themes that are adult-specific. He adds, “This particular play happened by chance. I wanted to take my wife and son to a play that could be watched with the whole family and that time nothing happened to be on in the city. So I decided to come up with my own play, but obviously using the medium that I am most comfortable in — music.” Hence, he spun the story line around 46 different songs, all with different ragas, apart from acting out the roles of all 38 characters in the play, including both male and female characters.

Explaining all the work that went into this mammoth play, Sen says, “It took me almost a year to make the play ready for its premier. For every 38 different characters in the play, I have to learn different sets of dialogues, change costumes and voices to essay each of the characters.”

The response to the play has been so phenomenal that ISKCON temple premises in the city themselves are providing space for the staging of the play on February 7. Interestingly, while the followers at the temple observe certain tenets of religious practices, including idol worship, given the popularity of the play, they will go the extra length to accommodate the musical biography of Kabeer, who propagated against idol worship.