Unfortunate that Bengali Actors Can’t Speak Bengali: Soumitra

RBN Web Desk: Veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee has rued that it’s unfortunate many Bengali actors today can’t speak their mother tongue properly. He has faced this predicament particularly in recent times, Soumitra said.

Speaking at an event in Kolkata yesterday, the thespian said, he once required 40 actors for a play that he was about to stage in the late 1990s. With budget constraints being integral to Bengali theatre, he was not in a position to hire professional actors. Soumitra had to recruit many ambitious young artistes, who claimed to be passionate about theatre, for his project. But during the audition and later during rehearsals, Soumitra found most of them couldn’t speak Bengali properly, adding that the problem has become more prominent recently.

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Narrating another incident, the 83-year old actor said, he was once shooting for a film near late poet Shakti Chattopadhyay’s house. During a break in the shooting he paid a courtesy call to Chattopadhyay’s wife. When he returned to the sets, a co-actor asked him, whether he could meet the poet. A stunned Soumitra said that this was impossible unless Shakti called him from beyond mortal boundaries.