Screenplays and Mindgames

Notes from the Theatre Festival – 2

There is a low murmur around Chennai’s theatre groups – a grouse that dare note speak its name. Theatre regulars would know that the Hindu Theatre Fest started off as an event primarily supported by local groups. Last year, the event shifted its venue to the Academy, and its focus to national troupes. The stage was still larger this year with some international groups taking part, while local groups were pushed to weekday performances, diplomatically dubbed as “the Chennai Chapter” in the smaller Sivagami Pettachi auditorium. I suppose the cash strapped theatre scene in Chennai had little choice but to accept what was thrown its way.

Not an entirely negative development in the end. The Sivagami Pettachi hall is a cozy little place which is far more comfortable than the Academy besides which, the acoustics are a lot less unpredictable. And despite the inconvenience of the timing, the few shows that I caught were all sold out.

The first of these was directed by Samanth Subramanian, a debutant director and a peddler of several talents which include, besides occasional daubs of greasepaint, writing and quizzing (one of the members of the Landmark quiz winning QED mentioned below).

Scripted by Ariel Dorfman, the play explores the festering wounds of the Pinochet dictatorship through the torment of a woman (Paulina – Sunanda Raghunath) who thinks she has found the man who’d raped and tortured her during the regime. The accused (Dr. Miranda – Samanth Subramanian) intermittently protests his innocence to the extent he can make himself intelligible through his panty-gagged mouth. Paulina’s husband (Gerardo, played very effectively by Freddy Koikkaran), is a lawyer who lurches between shocked disbelief at his wife’s dementia and his concerns about apostatizing his passionate belief in the law.

The material was powerful, shocking and for Chennai’s conservative audience, rather scandalous. Despite being inured to the bohemianism of theatre folk I found myself squirming and fidgeting when Sunandha did a toned down (mercifully!) re-take of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct! However, while her courage in taking up the role deserves appreciation, her tedious monologues, delivered in a drawling Tamil accent, only served to expose the geographical incongruity of the play’s setting.

Nevertheless, the strength of the script, some imaginative lighting and an inspired performance from Koikkaran (ably supported in the final stages by Samanth) prevented the play from descending into the sort of melodrama one normally associates with vernacular theatre in the city. The ending resolved the symbolic undercurrents into some stark and poignant questions about the pains of revolution and the insatiable, yet directionless, nature of vengeance…the gentleman sitting next to me, however, did not share my enthusiasm for it – he insisted on my providing a“JPH notes” style explanation of the conclusion!

A Landmark and a Quiz

“Shashtiabdhapoorthi” is how many a Mylapore mama with a predilection for drawing spiritual parallels chose to put it. Sixty years it’s been, sure, but I find the analogy misplaced. For the typical South Indian, the completion of 60 years signals the commencement of vanaprastha (even if it is in the concrete jungle these days!) – a time for retirement, contemplation and detachment. Hardly describes what’s going on in our country right now. It doesn’t get more materialistic or frenetic than this! "Sixty years young" is then, my clichéd take….

The media enthusiastically joined in the festivities, thankfully leaving Sanjay Dutt to his devices (pardon the unkind pun!) for a day or two. The Hindu, which had managed to keep Mr. Dutt within the confines (apologies repeated!) of the middle pages for the better part of his ordeal, expectedly put out the best tribute, adorned with a bouquet of priceless photographs.

But experiencing the wonder of India does not necessarily entail a collective wallowing in the past. While reminiscing about the lions of the freedom struggle is certainly a good way of working up the goosebumps, an equally effective method is to witness the miracles that our country serves up everyday, none of which is more heartening than the intellectual firepower of our young men and women. Here, more than anywhere else, the optimist likes to believe, resides our country..

My annual participation in the Landmark quiz has, therefore, less to do with hopes of covering myself with glory – the result is usually quite the opposite – than the reaffirmation of my faith in the spectacular repository of grey cells that is India. There was some vicarious pleasure as well – of the winning team’s (QED – which is threatening to become the Roger Federer of Chennai quizzing, having won the quiz last year as well) three members, one was a friend and another, a colleague…

Quizzing does not throw up too many stars but sometimes even the most exquisite leg glance (leave alone, the garish histrionics of Bollywood) pales in comparison to a solution stitched together from the slenderest threads of association between seemingly nonsensical bits of trivia– some of it is positively Freudian. These guys deserve much more than Rs. 40,000 in Landmark gift vouchers....

Happy 60th/6000th birthday India! Here's wishing you many more miracles!

Notes from the Theatre Festival

Cultural Awakening















Chennai’s cultural calendar finally begins to shed the sluggishness of a long and well, not so torrid, summer…The Metro Plus’ theatre fest has just rolled out its third edition, with a very international flavour, while Krishna Gana Sabha’s Gokulashtami concert series, running in parallel, is about as local as it gets…The Landmark Quiz lurks around the corner after which the city’s cultural scene should follow the pleasant example of the weather – Carnatica’s Bharat Utsav and the Hindu’s Classical Music Fest being among the events likely to throw up some dates you might want to block – leading upto the big daddy of Margazhi, the Music and Dance festival. Chennai is not quite Paris yet but it’s getting there….

Alas, the Music Academy IS a far cry from the Odeon. The Manipuri troupe that kicked off proceedings was disappointed with the size of the stage (a complaint that also surfaced during the Bavarian State Orchestra’s performance under Zubin Mehta’s baton a couple of years ago). The audience has its share of cribs as well. The scandalously cramped seats in the balcony haven’t yet seen the light of N Murali’s promises to rectify the ergonomic disaster that is the Academy auditorium.

The crowds seem to have voted with their feet – attendance was between 60-70% in the stalls and about 30% in the balcony. Not too many plays had less than 75% last year. One shudders at the thought of a laudable movement being reversed by audience apathy. C’mon folks – give that remote a break!

Men of Letters

I can’t remember any of the blurbs using “Experimental” as a prefix to the Theatre Festival but that’s pretty much what the plays on offer appear to suggest: A Manipuri dance-ballet in Meithei (Nine Hills One Valley), a play woven around a collection of press clippings (Three Strangely Normal Plays), a recitation of letters exchanged between Nehru and Gandhi (Dear Bapu)…whatever happened to good old screenplay? Is it any wonder that N Ram is willing to cough up a lakh of rupees for one?!

Anyway, the last of the above (Director - Mohan Maharishi) was unexpectedly engaging, giving even a small-time history buff like yours truly, some novel insights into the minds of the 2 chief architects of India’s post-colonial history. The parts were played (or should I say “read”) with flawless, if a little affected, eloquence by Bhaskar Ghose and Sunit Tandon. “Is-yous” for example takes you right back to Doordarshan News of the 80s with which, of course, both these gentlemen were intimately associated! Sabina Mehta was somewhat less inspiring in her role of providing random annotations to the epistolary exchange, slipping up once too often during her obiter dicta.

Magic Realism

It’s odd how closely one is able to relate to the equation between the two congress leaders, one that is defined as much by mutual respect as by a passionate difference of opinion – anyone who’s had a benevolent but overbearing boss, if there’s any such thing, would know what I am talking about.

Notwithstanding his remarkably forward-looking views on women’s empowerment, religion and the caste system, Gandhi’s muddle headed approach to socio-economic issues (in particular, his utopian ideal of a village based economy) is a source of endless frustration for an impatient socialist zealot with a clearly mapped out industrial vision for his country. Nehru’s directness and rationalism also come into conflict with the unfathomable methods of his senior colleague who, for all his principles, possessed a Machiavellian political mind and an extraordinary feel for the pulse of both the masses, and the rulers. Bursts of unreasonable irascibility followed by tactical retreats, a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other – Gandhi was a master manipulator whose ends Nehru could grasp only when he’d pull the occasional rabbit out of his hat – using a complete non-issue like the Salt Tax, for example, to set an entire country on fire (“magician” is a word Nehru uses repeatedly while referring to his mentor).

That a nation could emerge from such a Babel (we haven’t even touched upon Patel, Rajaji, Bose or Ambedkar – all political animals of different hues) was a minor miracle. And the fact that such a bhel-puri of ideologies has survived over 50 tempestuous years must rank as one of the most remarkable developments in modern history. But looking back, a cacophony of voices was probably the only thing that could’ve stitched together 300 million very diverse, and very opinionated, individuals…and oh! Despite all its holes, what a magnificent fabric we have woven, my countrymen!

A though-provoking pile of letters indeed…