Journal of Indian Cinema

Tag: Shakespeare

  • Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay — Vagabond Messiah

    Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay — Vagabond Messiah

    Which author holds the distinction of being the most adapted writer in the cinema of India? Shakespeare? Tagore? Premchand? Or, perhaps, Dharmvir Bharati? We Indians have never demonstrated excessive love for adaptations. Thus, if one were to list the most iconic litterateurs of the subcontinent, it would be noticed that quite a few of them, such as C. Rajagopalachari, Sarojini Naidu, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Suryakant Tripathi, Amitav Ghosh, and Anita Desai have not a single proper film adaptation to their name. There is however [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]one Indian writer whose works have been incessantly adapted, in multiple languages, and across the country — Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.[/highlight]

    IMDB lists 77 titles with Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay credited as writer. It includes films in five languages, spanning 97 years and encompassing filmmakers as diverse as Bimal Roy, Mehul Kumar, Crossbelt Mani, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Anurag Kashyap, Basu Chatterjee, Ajoy Kar, and Adurthi Subba Rao. In fact, in just two years’ time, Sarat Chandra adaptations would have completed a whole century in the film industry.

    Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
    Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

    Sarat himself led a spectacularly fascinating life. During his early days at Bhagalpur, he was so enamoured by the writings of English authors like Charles Dickens, Henry Wood and Marie Corelli, that he himself adopted the pseudonym “St. C. Lara”. Apparently, the St. and C referred to his first name Sarat and middle name Chandra. His mother Bubanmohini Debi passed away when he was only 19. By then, the bug of writing had bit him hard, and he started penning stories in Bengali for local magazines. His father Motilal Chattopadhyay, of extremely humble means, managed to get him a job at the local zamindar’s estate. But Sarat wasn’t at all happy with the work, and following an argument with his father, the former left home.

    Sometime later, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was discovered in the guise of a sanyasi, standing in the Muzaffarpur office of a popular magazine those days, called Bharatvarsha. In flawless Hindi, he requested to be furnished with writing materials. He was out of pen and paper.[/highlight] He was carrying a notebook, and the pages of that notebook were filled with countless stories. He was shipped back to his hometown.

    Radharani Devi. Photo courtesy: https://www.anandabazar.com

    Around this time, certain accounts mention a lover, a young widow who had captured his imagination. He kept alluding to her in various letters, without explicitly revealing who she was. Apparently, at the behest of this lady love, Sarat sailed for Rangoon in search of a livelihood. According to Radharani Devi, a close confidante of Sarat Chandra and a fiery feminist (back in the early 20th century, she wrote pieces on whether the “dignity” of a woman could be tied to her being a virgin), this mystery woman in Sarat’s live was probably Nirupama Devi, who was widowed as a child and spent a lifetime of rituals and strict rules that were painfully inflicted on Brahmin widows of the time. In his own writings, notably, Charitraheen and Srikanto, Sarat portrayed the state of young widows in Bengal but always fell short of getting them married. It has been hinted that this was because the woman he was in love with never got a chance at such liberation.

    Sarat Chandra remained in Rangoon till 1916, and it was during this phase that he got married to Shanti Devi. They were blessed with their first child, a son. But within a year, Shanti Devi and her infant child were claimed by the great plague of 1908. Two years later, Sarat got married again, this time to a widow. They were childless and stayed married till the end of his days. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]It was after his second marriage that Sarat truly flourished as a literary genius. His new bride, Hironmoyee, was an illiterate but provided the fuel for his creative output.[/highlight] Saratchandra was in his late 30s. In an incredible burst of prolificity, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay produced some of his best works in the next 25 years. Even while in Rangoon, in just the first two years he wrote works like Ramer Shumoti, Bindur Chhele, Naarir Mulyo and Charitraheen. Almost all of these books had formidable women characters, and the male characters seemed to pale in comparison. This remained a hallmark of Sarat’s writing throughout his oeuvre.

    Sarat was back in Bengal and within a few years, the stage adaptations began. It was the golden age of Bengali theatre, and the great theatrical genius Sisir Kumar Bhaduri was prancing about on the stages of Calcutta. Sisir Kumar adapted his story Shoroshi for the theatre and it was a raging hit. Sarat later wrote about it to his soul-sister Radharani Devi, speaking about Sisir in glowing terms. The first film adaptation of his work—Andhare Alo (1922)—was also directed by Sisir Kumar Bhaduri. The silent film was co-directed by Naresh Mitra, who within six years made the first adaptation of Devdas (1928). This was followed by Dhirendranath Ganguly’s adaptation of Charitraheen (1931).

    This was the time when a young filmmaker from Assam, Pramathesh Chandra Barua, was experimenting with the new technology of “talkie” films, in Calcutta, and for the first time there was the question of which language to make films in. Barua made the first “talkie” adaptation of Devdas (1935) in Bengali, with him playing the eponymous character. It was an instant sensation. In the following year, Barua directed the Hindi version, with singer-actor Kundan Lal Saigal playing the hero. The Hindi version was an even bigger hit. A Tamil version was made in the year after that. Danseuse and filmmaker Vedantam Raghavaiah made a Telugu/ Tamil bilingual in 1953. It had Telugu superstar Akkineni Nageswara Rao reprising the iconic role. The film became a milestone. Devdas Mukherjee, a jolted, ill-fated lover with a penchant for self-harm, had become the darling of the masses.

    But Sarat himself did not think too highly of this work. While he was in Rangoon, his friend Pramathanath Bhattacharya tried to coax him into publishing Devdas, which he had written way back in 1901. Sarat responded, “Don’t even think of it. It was written in a drunken state. I am ashamed of the book now. It is immoral…” But Pramathanath convinced him and eventually it was published in the former’s magazine, Bharatvarsha, in 1917.

    [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]It has been more than a hundred years, but Indian cinema’s obsession with the character hasn’t dissipated.[/highlight] The cinematographer of P.C. Barua’s Devdas, a young cameraman called Bimal Roy, adapted his version of the story in 1955. It still remains the most iconic of the lot, and stars Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala and Suchitra Sen. Devdas has been made in Bengali (India and Bangladesh), Telugu, Tamil, Assamese and Malayalam. There was even an Urdu version made in Pakistan, a film that was supposedly a “tribute to Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bimal Roy and The Great Dilip Kumar”, but the lead actor Nadeem Shah kept aping Shah Rukh Khan, who himself featured in a much-maligned-but-loved adaptation by Sanjay Leela Bhansali in 2002. Even Anurag Kashyap, who, much like Sarat himself, disliked the story, filmed a re-imagination called Dev D in 2009. Bimal Roy’s protege Gulzar planned an adaptation with Dharmendra, Hema Malini and Sharmila Tagore but it never did come to fruition.

    Gulzar with his Devdas cast. Photo: https://twitter.com/FilmHistoryPic

    Gulzar did however adapt Sarat Chandra’s Pondit Moshai as Khushboo (1975). Basu Chatterjee filmed three adaptations—Swami (1977), Apne Paraye (1980) and Zevar (1987). Bimal Roy directed as many as three adaptations, including Parineeta (1953) and Biraj Bahu (1954). Hrishikesh Mukherjee made Majhli Didi (1950). There were too a number of Telugu superhits starring Akkineni Nageswara Rao, and Tamil films like Manamalai (1958), Maalaiyitta Mangai (1958), and Kaanal Neer (1961).

    Sarat Chandra stands tall in the Indian literary pantheon. He wrote only in Bengali, but [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]his translated works are so native to North India that many of his works are considered a part of Hindi literature.[/highlight] Hindi writer Vishnu Prabhakar wrote a biography called Awara Maseeha, which is a veritable classic. Malayali poet Dr. Ottaplakkal Neelakandan Velu Kurup a.k.a. O.N.V. Kurup once said, “Sarat Chandra’s name is cherished as dearly as the names of eminent Malayalam novelists. His name has been a household word.” In a similar vein, his Marathi translations became native to Maharashtra.

    Almost all his works are marked by complex and layered female characters and flawed heroes. His almost-autobiographical Srikanto, in its original unedited version, begins with the protagonist writing while in an opium-intoxicated stupor. The portion had to be excised later. Since he showed an upper-class Brahmin widow fall in love in Charitraheen copies of his books were burned in front of his house. His novel Pother Dabi was banned by the British Raj for the depiction of armed revolutionaries.

    But while Devdas, admittedly Sarat’s weakest work, has been adapted with great fanfare, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]his magnum opus Srikanto, which displays fascinating glimpses of his personal life and includes some awe-inspiring women, is yet to be adapted in its entirety.[/highlight] Some portions of the latter have been brought to the screen in Bengali, and there was, in the 80s, a television serial featuring Farooq Sheikh as Shrikant. One would think that there is scope for a delightfully complex and layered adaptation of this book, now that we are in the middle of The Great Streaming Wars.

  • Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Literary works provide off-the-shelf fast food in the pecking order for film makers to ply their trade when writers’ block bite them. However, a majority of these “inspired” adaptations by filmmakers have always been a tricky and tacky proposition. Only a very few stay true to the text to the ‘T’ and covet the author’s as well as the audiences’ appreciation. The rest simply revel in making suitable — often-times, obnoxious — departures, retaining just a sliver of the original, and invoking disdain and depreciation; the individuals behind such are primarily motived to stamp their individuality on the “inspired” version rather than do due justice to the original and its larger thematic trajectory.

    One may well argue that it is the filmmaker’s prerogative on how to interpret the text in a manner that they feel is best to trigger its visual retelling in the film form. True. One certainly has to concede a person’s artistic freedom in giving vision to the text and theme at hand. However, simply retaining the kernel of an otherwise classical literary work, glibly garnishing the film to suit the maker’s febrile interpretation is not a done thing nor can one condone such an attempt; nothing can be more insulting and demeaning than that to the author, dead or alive, as also the audiences who place implicit trust on the director to come up with an honest and decent job. That unfortunately, and woefully, has been the case with the Bard of Avon William Shakespeare’s very many plays. Not that the revered Indian epics The Ramayan and The Mahabharat have not fallen prey to puerile, pitiable and pathetic renditions primarily pandering to the baser instincts of mass audiences to have cash registers clinking.

    Shakespeare must have turned in his grave every time there was an Indian version of his play, Macbeth in this case. Until of course, director Dileesh Pothan and screenwriter Syam Pushkaran’s “inspired” and inventive Joji joined the scroll of filmmakers by interpreting the bard’s play to a delectable and ensemble effect.  The film’s producer and lead actor, Fahad Faazil, who says it is “not a direct version of Macbeth, but one inspired by its theme,”[1] puts up a bravura performance, making Joji a pleasurable, engaging experience.

    On the international scene, there have been at least six international adaptations /inspirations of the nearly 415 years old play by various directors in the last five years itself — Macbeth (2015 and 2018), Lady Macbeth (2016), Ghost Light(2018), and Stained (2019). The latest is one in the making by one of the Cohen brothers, titled The Tragedy of Macbeth. Additionally, auteurs such as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski too have brought out their own versions.

    In India in the near past, Vishal Bharadwaj foisted Maqbool (Hindi), Jayaraj made the grandiloquent martial art epic Veeram (Malayalam), and Abhaya Simha came out with a modern day rendition, Paddayi (Kannada). But the “tragedy” of gargantuan proportions is that none of these three versions flatter to deceive. The emphasis by these three directors on overtly sexual, explicit body show and lust play with overzealous pursuit of the sex quotient rather than on a subtle, serious and sober look at how overarching avarice, ambition, and guilt, leading to penitence spell doom for the murderous person and his co-conspirator makes one roil at the respective director’s audaciousness to alter the text to their whimsy fancies.

    In fact, a cursory revisit of Shakespeare’s Macbeth would reveal that the playwright has never overtly or covertly dwelt upon lust or sexual trysts as a trigger.  The text only bespeaks of the prophesy of three witches — an opportunistic, over-zealous wife girding the protagonist to a greedy, ambitious action that brings about the doom, and death, of both once their conscience is stricken with guilt and remorse at their deed. This essentially is what the play is all about.

    These three Indian filmic adaptations /inspirations have done away with witches per se but not the occult or oracle portions that are perfunctory to the pursued plotline. Bhardwaj transposes the witches as corrupt, gun-toting, trigger happy buffoonery horoscope-reading cops. Jayaraj conveniently supplants them with exploitative, naked, nubile virginal lasses. And Simha invokes the local Bootha Kola spirit to tastefully deliver the prophesy, in keeping with the local cultural and folklore traditions.

    Since Pothan-Pushkaran’s version is a modern day one that speaks of a family’s expectation of ancestral property, the witches and oracle bit has not been included. Instead the film concentrates on the scheming persona and inner psyche of people populating the household, and shows how greed could stir up even the most lethargic male into affirmative, destructive action.

    Though Simha says “it is not necessary to be honest to the text, but be honest to the life being represented,”[2] his version too, like those of Bharadwaj and Jayaraj have conveniently not included the non-sellable parts of Macbeth.Instead, the trio sex up their respective films with sultriness, and the sensual play is of eyeball-popping proportions, and have stooped to tasteless vulgarity, besmirching the film’s rendition of the tragic play.

    Bhardwaj dresses up Maqbool with an illicit comeuppance cupid-play between the protagonist and a girl married to an aged man. Jayaraj has two nymphets pleasuring and goading his protagonist to avaricious action that could pass off as semi-porn. Simha, on his part, while faithfully retaining the original kinship of a newlywed couple, conveniently spices things up with their sensuous love play and body show in addition to bawdy dialogues, to supplant the film’s amorous quotient. He further embellishes it with needless eroticism — the wife enamoured by a Dubai scent that sends her into ecstatic, esoteric imaginations as an allegorical afterthought.

    Contrast this with the manner in which Pothan has constructed a subtle, understated, unwritten, undercurrent sexual frisson between the protagonist and his sister-in-law sans indulgent physicality. The duo’s matter-of-fact encounters, predominantly in the kitchen, with the man gorging on her cooked meals in no way vitiates the viewer’s aesthetic experience.

    While the trio have taken to a highly stylised, violent and bloody narrative structure in keeping with the general ambience that their respective films have been set in,  Pothan has eschewed such overt, visual exhibitionism and has in a minimalist manner rendered his version in a more relatable and realistic sedate tale of destructive greed, which is what Shakespeare’s Macbeth is essentially about.

    The films of the trio, unlike that of Pothan, have over-the-top situations. Bharadwaj locates his version in the familiar corruptive Mumbai underworld with its scheming dons, their lieutenants, rivalries, and bloody gang war, and two cops as convenient cogs to oil and grease the gangland warfare. Jayaraj is set in13th Century Kerala to the backdrop of Kalaripayattu (traditional martial warfare) warrior characters drawn from Kerala folklore. Simha sets his version in the high tide sea-washed shores of Mangaluru and the fishing community, the fishing trawlers, and shows the business rivalry between contended traditionalists and the money-minded mechanized owners.

    Pothan has situated Joji in the familiar everyday setting of a joint family in which the disciplinarian and doughty patriarch is robust as ever and still building his biceps. Despite his failing health, he defies death, and stands rock solid between the expectations of some of his offspring and the inheritance that would change their lives for the better.

    In terms of subtlety, Joji scores high; the characters convey their emotions through nuanced body language as they go about their daily chores in a mundane manner. Bharadwaj, Jayaraj and Simha, on the other hand, take recourse to embellishing their respective versions with seduction, incest, salaciousness, and needless bloodletting; none of which in any way justifies Shakespeare’s play of royal subterfuge of vaulting ambition and calamitous downfall.

    Therein lies the triumph of Pothan’s pure, fluid and fascinating Joji over the other three lavish productions whose directors concentrated more on vacuous atmospherics, wanton theatrics and audacious adult play than on getting into the pith of Shakespearean’s tragic, political and moralistic royal drama, whose primary import is that greed and vaulting ambition can bring upon one’s ruin and downfall.

     

     

    [1]Newsd. Inspired by Macbeth but not an adaptation: Malayalam star Fahadh Faasil on Joji. April 9, 2021.

    [2]Starbio. “How Paddayi director Abhaya Simha worked with Mogaveera fishing community in Karnataka”. November 29, 2018.

     

  • Aparna Sen — A River Plunging into its Own Depths

    Aparna Sen — A River Plunging into its Own Depths

    Aparna Sen

    Where the bee sucks,
    There suck I;
    In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
    There I couch when owls do cry;
    On the Bat’s back I do fly
    After summer merrily.
    Merrily , merrily shall I live now,
    Under the blossom
    That hangs on the bough.

    -The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

     

    With all her vivacity and volatility, Aparna Sen can be very challenging as a subject. For it is actually difficult to catch her in a single mood, even while she sits for a discourse on a serious issue. She is always playful, always coming up with a surplus of ideas, and an endless string of ‘ands’, and almost never for any ‘either or’. If at all Aparna Sen can be perceived or defined in a single term, it has to be briskness. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]With her fleeting gestures, twinkling glances and smiling lips, she hardly ever settles for a single mood. And by the time one tries to catch her mood, the next moment it is replaced by something else, which is constantly passing like the incessantly flowing river into which one cannot step twice.[/highlight] Or, like that eternal stream of moments ceaselessly becoming an ‘already’.

    Rare pic of Aparna Sen

    It is for this briskness that she is best embodied by the little squirrel Chorky — her companion in her first screen appearance as the mischievous teenager in Teen Kanya (1961). No wonder. It was Satyajit Ray, the master ‘seer’, who could feel the exact vibes of that swiftness; indeed, who else could have done that?

    But it isn’t just in terms of its gushing, linear movement, but also in its bottomless depths that Aparna Sen is exactly like a river; it is a river that is still thirsty and has set out to quench its thirst plunging into its own profundity. This river also comes up with the idea of the beyond, that is, the unseen part of the other bank, which always enchants people. For Aparna Sen isn’t simply extraordinarily beautiful, but something way beyond such; she isn’t simply outstandingly intelligent, but something way more. In her sharp features and elegant appearance, she literally embodies a classic exquisiteness.

    [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]In her multiplicity of roles as the scriptwriter, director and actor, Aparna Sen apparently resembles Prospero, the Duke of Milan, the magician, the creator and controller of events and at the same time, very much a part of those events. But, in essence, she is more akin to Ariel, the spirit of the air.[/highlight] For it is only Ariel, who sayeth ‘Before you can say “come” and “go”/ And breathe twice and cry “so so”’ in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who can assure us of that quaintness and softness of action.

    In spite of all these attributes, she never demands deification, but only simple praise and admiration. This prevents her creations from being incredible or magical. With a perfect combination of subject matter, story and cast, whatever she creates always remains credible, grounded, and all too humane, an approach adopted only by a handful of master creators.

    Aparna Sen’s portraiture of two claustrophobic middle-aged housewives in Parama (1985) and Paromitar Ek Din (2000), marks this humane approach. Parama’s character (played by Rahkhi Gulzar) shows that being human means frailty, desire and failure as much as it means strength, austerity and success. The sudden appearance of Rahul in her life makes her yearn to live life on her own terms, refusing to be no longer assured by the fake domestic security. The film is by no means an attack on domesticity; it is only Parama who feels like stepping out of its monotonous circularity. Unfortunately, she becomes a little too wayward to return and fit into that circle again. Meeting Rahul is like remembering her lost youth. She wistfully tries to compensate for something she could not make the most of. But it is too late for her to realize that, like Rahul, her youth too is gone forever!

    Aparna Sen at a Press conference

    In Paromitar Ek Din, Aparna Sen is in her directorial and performer’s best as Sanaka, an unhappy, deprived housewife of a middle class family. She is surrounded all the time by her big joint family, but prefers to isolate herself from its mundane demands, and finds her mental escape in the tiny images of the small frame of the television box. Her mind is always moored in a ‘somewhere else’ and this she confesses to her daughter-in-law Paromita; she confides to her that if her former lover had asked her even once, she would readily have run away with him, leaving everything behind — her husband, children, everything. Sanaka’s reaction over the news of her husband’s death and her childlike joy of kite flying are some staple moments that we go back to, over and over again. Or, can we ever forget the dejected Violet Stoneham walking home alone, or lovesick Snehamay writing letters to his beloved far away in Japan? Whether in the overt handling of the theme of communal violence, the subtle politics of everyday life, the hilarity of family drama, or the delicate nuances of female friendship, Aparna Sen is second to none.

    [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Aparna Sen is an example of how a woman can make bold statements about life and living by always remaining warm, tender and empathetic to others, preserving every feminine grace and charm and never ever being rude and aggressive.[/highlight] Her political stand is always very clear and both as a person and a professional she refuses to be presented by someone else’s vision. This is the reason why she switched over from acting to scriptwriting and directing. She has her own stories to tell and she tells them so intriguingly, leaving no loose strands to hang clumsily here and there. She is always driven by her own instincts and beliefs and never takes the audience for granted. Even as she turns seventy-five, she still remains the sprightly teenager that she had enacted sixty years before — never trying to surprise her audience with feeble twists, but always answering their pleasure exactly like ‘dainty’ Ariel, “be’t to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds.”

     

    Awards
    Aparna Sen is the recipient of the Padma Shri as well as 9 National Film Awards.

    Photo credits
    Header pic of Aparna Sen on the sets, by Prem Prakash Modi
    Aparna Sen at Kolkata by Biswarup Ganguly
    Rare pic of Aparna Sen by Benu Banerjee
    Aparna Sen at The Japanese Wife press meeting by Bollywood Hungama

     

  • Hrid Majhare

    Hrid Majhare

    The Shakespearean spark — Hrid Majhare
    Language: Bengali
    Writer-director: Ranjan Ghosh

    Destiny, love, and jealousy walk side by side in Ranjan Ghosh’s directorial debut, Hrid Majhare. The storyline and the script belong exclusively to him, but a variety of Shakespearean themes spark spontaneously from time to time. The film adapts the stroke of ineludible destiny, precisely, the pithy maxim “character is destiny” effectuated by Shakespeare. It is a credible collage visual  adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and most decidedly, Othello.

    On a lonely, drizzling Kolkata night, a charming math professor, Abhijit (Abir Mukherjee) encounters a feisty and beautiful cardiologist, Debjani (Raima Sen). Cupid immediately strikes, and forcefully.

    The twisted narrative leads from one thing to the other and the protagonist’s settled life soon stares at traumatic fragmentation. When logic seems to bow its head to the power of fate, these two vulnerable souls fight hardhanded against the inescapable. Sempiternal love gets catechised, trust glimmers, and jealousy raises its vile head, making them victims of their own choices. The ambiance of the very first as well as the very last time the couple meet is identical — a dark, rainy night. The difference between the two lies in the contrast of the situations; one sparks hot love, the other, frigid death.

    Abir Mukherjee as Abhijit is at first a picture of confidence and wears the cocky posture of a man well in charge of things, but gradually the contours of his face begins to exhibit a life of tragic sequences. Raima Sen is only required to do her stereotyped roll plays in legion urban films.

    Similar to the limbo state of mind of the titular character of Hamlet, in Hrid Majhare too, the protagonist destroys himself by overthinking and indecisiveness. He adopts Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ dilemma and begins to question himself on the value of life and whether it is efficacious to hang on. If in Macbeth, three witches make a prophecy, in Hrid Majhare, it is a soothsayer who sounds a stern warning ‘to stay away from love’. Distinct traces of the Othello character too is found; the protagonist is required to undertake a journey, and is consumed by suspicion and a situational crime.

     

     

    Hrid Majhare, considered by the critics as one of the top ten adaptations on Shakespeare in Indian Cinema since 1949, is the first Shakespearean inspiration in Bengali. In addition to receiving several laurels internationally, the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examination board has included Hrid Majhare as additional resource in their respective ‘A level Drama and Theatre’ courses.