Jogesh Dutta first attracted popular notice at the National Youth Festival in Calcutta that year, and there was no looking back. A delegate to the World Youth Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1968, he undertook frequent and extensive foreign assignments, covering nearly all countries of Europe, North America, and Asia, some of them more than once. Founding his own mime troupe, Padabali, in 1971, he started a school for mime, Jogesh Mime Academy, in 1975. He was also a distinguished teacher of mime at the Department of Drama, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. His creations, now forming a repertoire of over a hundred sketches, are mostly short and hugely funny imitations of scenes from everyday life with a sympathetic undertone for the oppressed and underprivileged. Most of the titles speak for themselves. Some of the names can be mentioned as The Haircutting Saloon, Walking, The Bus Passenger, When I Was i.e. A Beggar's Dream, A Naughty Boy, A Thief, A Society Lady, The Operation Theatre, Unemployed Youth, The Old Servant, The Exploited Labourer, Mosquitoes, The New TV Set in the Middle-class Home, Scenes in a Government Office. A few deals with Puranic texts and themes, like Sita and Hanuman, while some, like Long Live the Vietnamese, tackle political and humanistic issues. The Indian Films Division documentary, The Silent Art of Jogesh Dittta in 1983, was shown in fourteen languages. |