Director Suman Mukhopadhyay first staged
Mephisto in Kolkata to protest the 2002 Gujarat riots. The Bengali play re-emerged in 2012 as a critique of the violence displayed by the ruling Trinamool Congress party. It is based on Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel of the same name, Ariane Mnouchkine’s stage version of the book and Hungarian filmmaker Istvan Szabo’s movie adaptation.
Now, smack in the middle of the Bengal assembly elections,
Mephisto is back on the stage in Kolkata to “remind people of how authoritarian fascist rule can destroy the fabric of a country, and what the role of an artist can be in this situation”, Mukhopadhyay told
West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee
KOLKATA: At a protest meet held in Esplanade on Monday, questions were raised about how a journalist close to the BJP-government at the Centre could share classified information involving national security and even flaunt how the martyrdom of jawans will be used for political gains.
Celebrities from all spheres of life, including Goutam Ghose, Subhaprasanna, Joy Goswami, Nirbed Roy, Pratul Mukhopadhyay, Raj Chakrabarty, Nusrat Jahan, Debleena Dutt Mukherjee, Saayoni Ghosh, Leena Gangopadhyay, Haranath Chakraborty, Tathagata Mukherjee, Sudeshna Roy, Kaushik Sen, Tanushree Chakraborty, Soumitra Ray, Sohini Sengupta, Paroma Banerjee, Lagnajita Chakraborty, Shankar Chakrabarty, Kanchan Mallick, Joyjeet Banerjee, Premendu Bikash Chaki, Suchismita Dasgupta, Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee and Riddhi Sen protested the rise of “fascist, power-hungry, misogynist forces in Bengal”.