PUTNEY, Vt. – Next Stage Arts presents “Buddhadeva,” a tender and searching solo performance by Akaina Ghosh, on Friday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:45 p.m., at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill in Putney. Tickets are available at www.nextstagearts.org.
In “Buddhadeva,” Ghosh creates a love letter and a conjuring in conversation with the life and work of their great-grandfather, the prolific Bengali writer and poet Buddhadeva Bose. Set along the banks of the Ganga River, a place associated with death and rebirth, the work moves through poetry, music, memory, ritual, love, loss, and translation.
Ghosh, a nonbinary, second-generation American-Bengali artist, seeks connection with an ancestor they never knew through Bose’s writings and poetry. The performance considers what can be recovered from a family history that survives in fragments, particularly when language itself becomes a distance to cross.
What gets lost in translation? What can be discerned from the scattered pieces of the past? Can we find ourselves within the words of our ancestors? Buddhadeva sits with these questions, making space for both the limits and possibilities of reconnection.
The work speaks especially to children of immigrants and anyone curious about the lives, stories, and silences that shape their own family history. Ghosh offers the performance as a bridge between past and present, inviting audiences into an intimate reflection on lineage, belonging, and the enduring power of language.