Moment from Ethnomedia?s Ron

Non-resident Bengalis are all too happy living out the great American dream, aren?t they? A New Jersey stage production with an all-Bengali cast told a very different story.

Ron, a bilingual play in English and Bengali that was staged on Tuesday as part of the Ganakrishti Natyotsav at Rabindra Sadan, portrayed the confusion and crisis lying at the core of the probashi (non-resident) Bangali in the US.

?We have shown two generations of non-resident Bengalis and the clash of values between them ? issues of loyalty towards one homeland, conflict of values and the confusion of where one should be. These are our problems and they are more pronounced in Bengalis who have been living in the US for the past 30-35 years,? says theatre group Ethnomedia?s founder member Sudipta Bhawmik who has scripted and directed Ron.

Ethnomedia was formed in 2002 with theatre-loving people from the fields of IT, finance and business, with Bhawmik, who had migrated to the US in the late 1980s, at the helm. The IIT Kharagpur alumnus, now working with an IT firm in New Jersey, had once trained in theatre under Saoli Mitra.

Ron begins with a Bengali family settled in America faced with a crisis when the only son decides to join the US army. ?Ron, (shortened version of Ronobir), is deployed in Iraq triggering confusion among his parents who still feel Indian at heart. They are overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for having fled their homeland,? explains Bhawmik, heading a team of actors who make time every week to gather for rehearsals.

Ron was first staged at the South Asian Theatre Festival in the US. Before that, Ethnomedia had staged Kalshuddhi at the New York Fringe Festival where it was ?lapped up by the Bengali audience that included Jhumpa Lahiri?.

?Till now we have done four productions on our lives,? says Bhawmik, who stresses that there is an active Bengali theatre culture in the US, with groups like Epic Actors? Workshop working on classical plays. ?But there are financial constraints, like elsewhere. All of us pool in and raise funds through advertisements and sponsorships to stage a production.?

Bhawmik feels Ethnomedia has been able to strike a chord among the non-resident Bengali youth, though finding young actors for Bengali theatre is not so easy.

New York-based Amitav Roy, who plays 25-year-old Ron in the play, had his first brush with acting with this play. ?Time is a factor but I want to do more theatre in Bengali. It has been great,? says the computer science graduate.