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Plays about Ramakrishna

(The above is a preliminary title for the page, for after it is moved to article space)

Sri Ramakrishna in October, 1885

Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886), born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay and often referred to as Sri Ramakrishna, was a famous mystic of 19th-century India.

Since the middle 1900s, Ramakrishna has been a primary or secondary focus of a number of plays, mostly made in Bengali theatre, but also {???}.

Many of these plays have been both devotional and biographical, portraying major events of Ramakrishna's influential life. Ramakrishna grew up in a small village in rural West Bengal. Most of his adult life was spent at a temple at Dakshineswar in the outskirts of Calcutta (now commonly called Kolkata). Within a few years of his death, Ramakrishna's religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda Many plays about Ramakrishna depict events from these parts of his life and legacy.

Ramakrishna's direct involvement with theatre

As a boy, Ramakrishna participated in theatrical productions in his village. The location where he acted is being restored. In one production, when Ramakrishna, then called Gadadhar, was required to play the god Shiva, he went into ecstasy for several hours.{ref}

Ramakrishna's visit as an audience member to the Star Theatre in 1884 was a transformative moment for Bengali Theatre, especially for Girish Chandra Ghosh and Binodini Dasi.{get ref}

His influence is remembered in Bengali Theatre.{source and details?}

Actors portraying Ramakrishna

Many different actors have played Ramakrishna.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Gurudas Banerjee portrayed Ramakrishna in numerous plays in the Bengali Theatre and films in the Bengali Cinema — one might almost say that beginning in the late 1940s, "he almost monopolized this role [as Ramakrishna] as a specialist, both on the stage and on the screen," and was still portraying Ramakrishna in the late-1970s. Sushil Mukherjee explained that the drama Jugadevata, which debuted on the Calcutta stage on 19 November 1948,

was a devotional drama... on the life of the Saint of Dakshineswar [that] became immensely popular and established two artistes who became wholly identified with the two characters they represented. These were Gurudas Banerjee who was seen as Sri Ramkrishna and Molina Debi who appeared as Rani Rasmoni, the founder of the famous Bhabatarini (Kali) temple at Dakshineswar. Since their appearance in Jugadevata at Kalika in 1948 Gurudas and Molina have appeared in the characters of these two persons in a number of other plays, both on the stage and on the screen, and have carried the audience with them in every performance.

Another actor who frequently played the part of Ramakrishna was Ajit Kumar Panja ((September 13, 1936 – 14 November 2008)). He portrayed the role of Ramakrishna for 30-35 years at a stretch.{source}

Ajit Kumar Panja was reportedly "floored with the deification that followed his portrayal of Ramakrishna".

List of Plays about Ramakrishna

Some plays have a primary focus on Ramakrishna (designated by asterisk (*)). Other plays depict a contemporary of Ramakrishna, and he appears as a character, sometimes major and sometimes minor. These include plays about {???}.

Grid

	Opening date	Title	Play-wright	Rama-krishna (actor)	Director	Location	Notes & Sources
*	1948 Nov. 19	Jugadebata	Tarak Mukherjee	Gurudas Banerjee		Kalika Theatre (Calcutta)	Bengali; Source; Also Molina Devi (Rani Rashmoni)
*	1955	Thakur Sri Ramakrishna		Gurudas Banerjee		Minerva Theatre (Calcutta)	Source; Also Molina Debi (Rani Rashmoni). Part of a state Congress celebration
*	1960 Mar. 19	Paramaradhya Sri Sri Ramakrishna	Devanayaran Gupta	Gangadas Bhattacharya		Star Theatre (Calcutta)	Source; Also Ajit Bandopadhyay (Ramkumar), Anup Kumar (Hridaya), Aparna Debi (Rani Rashmoni), Bhanu Banerjee]] (Sankar Gossain), Gita Dey (Jagadamba), Kamal Mitra (Mathur Babu), Played 76 nights until 10 July 1960.
	1975	Nata Nati	Ganesh Mukherjee	Gurudas Banerjee	Ganesh Mukherjee	Rangana Theatre (Calcutta)	Source; Kartick Banerjee (Girish Gose), Basanti Chaterjee (Binodini), Sudhangsu Maiti (Narendranath), and others. Over 300 performances
*	??	Sri Sri Ramakrishna	Brajendra Kishore Dey	Ajit Kumar Panja			From WP for actor Panja, states: "made according to the story of Noti Binodini written by Late. Brajendra Kishore Dey) organised by Kolkata High Court Advocate's Drama Association in India. The play was staged in London and USA (Washington, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles"
*	??	Parampurush Ramakrishna					A theatrical play "Parampurush" (Bapi Bose, dir.) was reviewed in The Hindu 9 Dec 2009 Perhaps it was shown on ETV Bangla? - SEE HERE

* = Primarily about Sri Ramakrishna

Spelling variations in names

The English titles of these plays refer to Ramakrishna in a variety of ways, depending upon the play's original non-English title, and the method of transliteration into English. Several different methods are commonly used for transliterating Bengali into English. Bengali often uses Bs where other Indian languages use Vs (e.g., "Bhagaban" versus "Bhagavan"). Thus, titles of plays about Ramakrishna refer to both "Ramkrishna" (with only 2 "a"s) as well as "Ramakrishna," and may describe his mystical status in numerous ways ranging from Paramahamsa ("enlightened teacher") to Bhagaban ("divine and splendrous") to Thakur ("lord") to Jugadebata ("divine incarnation of the present age"{TITO OR OTHER BENGALI SPEAKER, IS THIS CORRECT FOR jugadebata?-Presearch}). Similar variety exists in the transliterations of the names of many Bengali actors that appeared in these plays — for example, alternate spellings of the last name of actor Gurudas Bannerjee are "Banerjee" (one "n") well as "Bandyopadhyay."

Major focus on Ramakrishna (theatrical plays)

{XXX} plays have had a major focus on Ramakrishna.

Jugadebata (1948)

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Thakur Sri Ramakrishna (1955)

{expand using info from Gurudas Banerjee page about Illustrated Weekly}

Paramaradhya Sri Sri Ramakrishna (1960)

Opened 1960 Mar. 19 {expand, move most of cast list here}

Parampurush Ramakrishna (2009)

{expand}

Secondary focus on Sri Ramakrishna (plays)

Several playss have not had a primary focus on Sri Ramakrishna, but have cast him as a secondary character. These include: {EXPAND VIA INTRO ABOUT MAJOR THEMES}

Additional bibliography (to integrate into article)

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