HEAR, HERE HEADS TO KOLKATA!
Hear Here arrives in Kolkata after seven volumes and counting in Bombay. What drew us to it wasn’t just the readings themselves, but the simple magic of gathering in a room to hear a play.
I’ve often found reading plays alone to be difficult. But hearing those same texts read aloud surrounded by the laughter, silences and reactions of strangers completely transformed the experience. Those shared responses became part of the storytelling. I wanted Kolkata to experience that too.
This opening lineup has been curated to bring together the many voices of the city’s theatre community around a shared text. The conversations that follow are not meant to offer conclusions, only beginnings. We hope each reading sparks new questions, new discoveries, and a desire to return for the next one.
Come read a play. Stay for the conversation.
A note from the Curators
When we were invited to curate Hear, Here - Kolkata, the first question was the hardest: which plays do we return to? Bengal's literary and theatrical history is rich with extraordinary writing, yet there are few spaces where playwrights, theatre makers and audiences can simply gather around a script, read it aloud and talk about it.
Third Bell was created to commission new Bangla plays and bring playwrights into conversation. Hear, Here Kolkata extends that impulse through public readings followed by discussions with theatre practitioners and scholars, offering fresh ways of engaging with these texts today.
This edition begins with Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi in her centenary year, revisits Utpal Dutt's Barricade for its enduring political relevance, returns to Usha Ganguly's Rudali, a landmark work of contemporary Indian theatre, and concludes with Rabindranath Tagore's Muktadhara, whose questions of power, technology and freedom remain strikingly current. Alongside these, we present the three new Third Bell commissions by Gaurav Das, Rituparna Biswas and Somudranil Sarkar.
We hope these readings become an invitation to read, listen and discuss together, while keeping playwrights and playwriting at the centre of our theatre conversations.
Meghna Roy Choudhury and Ninad Samaddar
PREVIOUS EDITIONS
