Director Manik Roy recently staged Arun Sarma’s Anupam Andhar (Dark Is Beautiful) at the Surjya Club Auditorium, presented by the Guwahati Sishu Natya Vidyalaya (GSNV), in an intimate two-character production that distilled the play’s larger themes into a compact, 55-minute performance. First published in 2013 and among the last major full-length scripts of the celebrated Assamese playwright, Anupam Andhar remains a probing exploration of perception and identity.
Roy’s production pared down Sarma’s character-rich text to two adolescent performers, Mriganga Raj Roy as Suman and Atrayee Gogoi Dutta as Anita, a choice that both intensified the drama and presented a substantial directorial challenge. Sustaining audience attention with only two characters in a confined stage environment required precise pacing and a focus on subtle physicality rather than spectacle.
The play is set in the waiting room of a busy railway station, where Suman, a music-loving youth from Duliajan who admires Bob Marley, and Anita, a classically trained student devoted to Dr. Bhupen Hazarika, meet by chance. Both are visually impaired, but neither knows the truth about their own or the other’s condition; each assumes the other can see. That dramatic irony drives the piece and frames its central inquiry into how individuals construct reality.
Anupam Andhar treats sightlessness not as lack but as an alternate mode of perception. The protagonists map their world through sound, touch, memory and intuition, creating a subjective reality that the audience is invited to share. The production emphasised suggestion, silence and absence, letting imagination supply what is not shown on stage.
Onstage chemistry between the two leads grows organically from shared conversation about music and everyday life, and the bond that forms is presented as a “bridge of darkness” — a connection born of events and feeling rather than physical sight. The eventual revelation that both will board the same train acts as a quiet nod to fate: separate journeys converging at an emotional destination.
Mriganga and Atrayee committed deeply to their roles, using measured gestures — the blank stare, turning toward sound, careful pauses — to convey the inner life of their characters. These restrained choices often spoke louder than dialogue.
The production credits include co-director Runumi Devi, music by Diganta Sarma and Akash, lighting by Manik Roy, and vocal contributions from Uttam Kumar Deka, Dhiraj Mazumder, Akash, Rajib Lochan Gogoi and Nisthawali Madhukalya. Overall, the staging offered a quiet, thoughtful rendering of Sarma’s play that foregrounded perception, tenderness and the enduring impact of brief human encounters.
Original Source: https://nenow.in/entertainment/anupam-andhar-through-the-beauty-of-darkness.html
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Publish Date: 2026-06-01 00:13:00
