ADITY CHOUDHURY
SHILLONG:
The Department of English, Sankardev College, presented a play, Questionable Corona, on the occasion of Shakespeare Day and the Diamond Jubilee celebration of the college, on Saturday.
Directed by Naomi Bhuyan and Bryan D Wahlang, the dark comedy kept the audience, mostly students and faculty members, in splits and on their toes.
The session commenced with a short paper presentation on Shakespeare and the pandemic by Farahbell Giri Sahkhar, faculty of the department, detailing the effects of the Bubonic Plague on his writing, followed by an introductory speech by Bhuyan on the play.
Questionable Corona began with Virus, portrayed by Reynold JL Nongbet, greeting the audience until Zeto, played by Anthony S Marak, enters the stage with the chant of “Go Corona” – the latter had, earlier, gone viral on social media.
The characters Vaccine, Omega and Alpha, portrayed by Euan Kharmon, Naomi Bhuyan and Lapynshai S Marak, respectively, questioned Virus on its purpose, including its motive behind taking human lives.
In doing so, the play questioned the audience on “our role in creating the global pandemic”.
Nongbet said, “Being a part of this play was a wonderful experience for me considering it’s a hot topic. I was really hyped up.”
“Opinion on the existence of the coronavirus has been divided – some people believe and some don’t. Being a dark comedy, people got a glimpse of different perspectives through us,” he added.
Terming his character as “a melodramatic psycho with a sensitive side”, Nongbet felt Virus had pride and set the world on a course correction.
In his role, Vaccine, Kharmon said, “It’s false information, doubts on its effectiveness, yet also depending on science.”
For Lapynshai, Alpha is an angry and devastated woman. The pandemic makes her question Virus. Anthony maintained how his character depends on booze, calling it “the sanitiser”, rather than the vaccine.
The play ended with Bhuyan thanking her team and the different people – nurses, frontline workers, and resource-persons Roger Sangma and Nabamita Mitra, among others – whose stories shaped her writing.
“During writing and staging our play, we learnt that the greatest enemy is fear, and consciously chose ‘dark comedy’ as the genre. Our aim was to celebrate laughter and acceptance,” she said. Adding that the enemy is an invisible being, Bhuyan reiterated that the only sensible thing to do is change our lifestyle and build our immunity.
Through questioning the audience, Bhuyan and her team challenged the audience to think and ask questions, coinciding with the motto of the college, “From Darkness to Light”. For her, theatre is about observation and empathy. They had to be conscious of how people were affected by the pandemic, including personal stories of love and loss.