Henrik Ibsen's works have inspired a range of theatrical and cinematic reinterpretations in India, where his themes have been reimagined through local social, cultural and psychological contexts.
A recent paper by Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman examines two such cinematic reworkings: Tamal Dasgupta's Bhalo Meye Kharap Meye (Good Girl Bad Girl, 2019) and K P Kumaran's Aakasha Gopuram (Castle in the Air, 2008), exploring how the films reinterpret Ibsen's concerns for contemporary Indian audiences.
Bhalo Meye Kharap Meye, primarily based on noted Bengali author Suchitra Bhattacharya's novel of the same name and loosely inspired by A Doll's House, transforms Nora's quest for selfhood into a critique of urban patriarchy, sexual violence and the commodification of women's suffering in modern Kolkata.
Through the character of Urmi, the film revisits the spirit of Nora's rebellion while grounding it in the social realities of contemporary Bengal.
In contrast, Aakasha Gopuram, an adaptation of Ibsen's The Master Builder, moves away from social realism to explore ambition, guilt, desire and artistic obsession. The film offers a psychologically driven interpretation of Ibsen's work.
Drawing on adaptation studies and postcolonial theory, the paper argues that the 2 films are not straightforward translations of Ibsen. Instead, they represent creative acts of cultural reinterpretation.
The films demonstrate how a playwright introduced to India through colonial channels has been appropriated, transformed and localised by regional filmmakers. Together, the adaptations underline Ibsen's continuing relevance in India, where his works remain a powerful means of exploring gender, identity, power and human aspiration in a postcolonial context.
Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman is Professor of English and Director of the Kazi Nazrul Islam and Abbasuddin Ahmed Research & Study Centre at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), Dhaka.
He graduated from the Department of English at the University of Dhaka and earned both his MPhil and PhD in Ibsen Studies from the University of Oslo, Norway.
Throughout his academic career, Ahsanuzzaman has held several leadership positions, including Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, Head of the English Discipline, Director of the Institutional Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), and Director of the Fine Arts Institute at Khulna University.
He has directed seven student theatre productions, including adaptations of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in 2006, A Doll's House in 2017 and Hedda Gabler in 2025, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet.
His recent scholarly publications in Ibsen and performance studies include “Artifact as Digihistory: Re-viewing Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh Through Ibsen's Brand”, published by Springer Nature in 2023, and “Constructing a New Identity Space for Women in Post-colony: Sambhu Mitra's Production of A Doll's House”, published by Routledge in 2023.
His latest publication is a creative work titled Ibsen Encounters Tagore: A Brechtian Play, published in The Business Standard on March 20 to commemorate Ibsen's 198th birthday.
Ahsanuzzaman is currently organizing the Ibsen-Fosse Festival Bangladesh 2026, to be held on September 30. The festival will feature the first-ever staging of a Jon Fosse play in Bangladesh.
The production, Suzannah, has been translated into Bangla by Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman and Subah Binte Ahsan and is being directed by Ahsanuzzaman.