Reshmi Sen engrossed with Kasturba Gandhi’s character

The character of Kasturba Gandhi in Swapnasandhani’s latest play, Ekla Chalo Re, has moved Reshmi Sen deeply. The actress, who has been portraying Kasturba on stage, finds the nuances of the character pretty challenging. “First of all, it is a real-life, historic and well-documented person. It is not some imaginary character. Hence, a lot of reading went in to get a grasp of the character.Once you get hold of that, you will be engrossed by her. She lived with a person like Gandhiji. While the entire nation worshipped her husband, she dealt with many other shades of Mahatma. As I got involved with the character, her struggle and dilemma became clear to me,” the actress said.
Reshmi, along with husband Kaushik Sen, and son, Riddhi, recently visited Canada to stage a play, Fourth Witch. “It is a play that Kaushik wrote when he used to teach in a school. It is a blend of the Bard’s Macbeth and a contemporary take of it. The play delves into the question of whether there is a fourth witch in the original text. We had an invitation to perform there. The members of Toronto Bengali Drama Group invited us to hold workshops and stage a play,” she told us.
And how was the reaction, we asked. “It was fabulous. There was a group in the audience who invited us to take the play to Seattle. We will be travelling again with Fourth Witch this year. We have not performed it frequently in Kolkata. If we get any chance, we definitely will,” Reshmi signed off.