STAGE CRAFT
RAJDWEEP DEY 32 PLAYWRIGHT, DHING, ASSAM
On being asked if he would write a script on sports star Hima Das, who is from his native village Dhing, Rajdweep Dey smiles and says: “Maybe, if the demand is there.” Dey is today the most soughtafter scriptwriter for Assam’s mobile theatre groups, which are known for their massively successful plays. So much so, films stars in Assam often shift streams to do these plays to earn more money. Dey’s work has now got national recognition, with his screenplay ‘Ishqlogy’ ranked fourth among more than 3,500 scripts in the first edition of Cinestaan India’s Storyteller’s Contest. What made the success sweeter was that the jury included superstar Aamir Khan and filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani. “Getting a prize from Aamir was a surreal experience,” says Dey, who travelled to Mumbai to receive the award. Ishqlogy deals with the conflict between faith and science. “It’s a love story, but it’s melded with real incidents from different parts of India,” he says.
Back in Assam, Dey doesn’t need the Bollywood tag as his plays run to full houses everywhere. The mobile theatre groups travel to 80 locations every year. “When it comes to Rajdweep’s plays, we often have to do extra shows. You will see long queues for tickets from morning” says Biren Saikia, secretary of Raj Mukut Theatre. Dey’s last two plays, Bauli Mur Priya and Boliya Krishna, were the highest grossers in the past two years. “His plays are realistic, and the presentation is always entertaining,” says Rajiv Haloi, 32, who bought a frontrow ticket for Bauli Priya when it came to Nalbari town.
But success did not come instantly for Dey. His first two plays were big flops. Meeting people from different walks of life during his day job as a journalist helped Dey iron out the flaws. “When we start, we want to experiment and do something new and at times miss out on the basics,” he says. “The key is making every scene in the play complete in itself. There must not be a dull moment.”
The Cinestan award wasn’t Dey’s first tryst with Bollywood. He wrote a song for actorturnedfilmmaker Konkona Sensharma’s debut film,
A Death in the Gunj , and the Bihu song for Anurag Basu’s Jagga Jasoos. Though the success in a national competition is exciting and Mumbai has enough to lure him, Dey is still not ready to make the geographic shift. “I’m too busy here. I not only write, but also direct my plays. I have already submitted plays for next year to different theatre groups. Rehearsals will start soon,” he says.
Dey, who has postgraduate degrees in economics and mass communication, says time is a luxury that he cannot afford. When the Cinestan jury learnt that Dey took only 15 days to finish Ishqlogy, they were shocked. “We work for years on a script. Take your time, young man,” one of the members apparently told him. He is now waiting for his time in Bollywood, just that he’s in no hurry.