Trends in theatre that may continue this year

Last year there were certain trends in theatre that could be followed this year as well. Myth, history and fables were used to present a contemporary viewpoint. Whether it was the play Vilotamma written by Mohan Maharishi in which a princess of Ujjaini marries the great poet Kalidasa and showcases their life in the city or Irawati Karve’s Rage and Beyond about Gandhari’s duplicity. Both the plays were based on ancient legends.

In Rage and Beyond the playwright questions Gandhari’s act of blindfolding herself. Is she doing this out of genuine sympathy for her husband who is blind because her husband is blind or an act of political expediency Was she really mourning with the widows of her sons or did she put on an act to impress the rest of the Kaurav clan Irawati’s reinterpretation of the Mahabharata is full of contemporary references.

Maharishi takes us into the city of Ujjaini to show us how the passion of a couple can wane when one of the partners is hiding something. Vilottama does not let Kalidasa know where she has been to be in this condition of distress and pain. For she had been to India in this century and been gang-raped. She has been given the powers by Shiva to be in any time zone that she wants to be. It took the genius of Kiran and V.K. Sharma to show us how a fairy tale can be made relevant for our times. Red Riding Hood is the story that they have chosen and it talks about the big bad wolves being men in our times and how a girl should be wary of them. The story was told through the students of the Ramjas School, Pusa Road. Some of the dialogues were written by the students and others by the scriptwriter Kiran Sharma. They spoke about advances made by teachers on female students and how the girls from different families faced the situation in their own way.

The Kannada play Tale Dande written by Girish Karnad and translated into Hindi by B.V. Karanth and Ram Gopal Bajaj was staged by Shantanu Bose at the Umbrella theatre festival. This festival brings together different groups in Delhi under one roof. The play was about a man, Basavanna, living in the city of Kalyan, who assembled a congregation of poets, mystics, social revolutionaries and philosophers unmatched for their creativity and social commitment in the history of Karnataka. They opposed idolatry, rejected temple worship, upheld gender equality and condemned the caste system. Events took a violent turn when they acted on their beliefs and a Brahmin girl married a low caste boy and the movement ended in bloodshed with the king and many being sharnas killed. The chorus was very good in movements, gestures and mimicry. The play was a stark reminder of the death caused by intolerance in our society.

Translated as Paighamber, the play based on Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, was a difficult play to enact. It is full of abstractions and symbols and it does not have a coherent narrative structure. It opens with a figure clad in black revealed behind a chorus singing about a crow who is requested to come back. But the black figure is not a crow, he is the Paighamber played by Tom Alter. The people in the village represent wind, ether, fire, water and earth. There is a boy among them who is the result of the amalgamation of the elements. He grows up to be a philosopher and a thinker. There is a sutradhar who reads from the novel.

His interactions with Anant, the boy, reveal Gibran’s philosophy to an extent. Advertised as a musical, it was sadly lacking in that department. The lack of action in the script was sought to be compensated by colored lights and fog boxes were continuously and indiscriminately used. It was obvious that the director was unsure of how to treat such an abstract script.

Another play, Not What You Think, was performed at the Old World Theatre Festival. It was performed in the Italian Comedia Delle Arte style, with all the actors wearing half masks. The play talks about the confrontation between a little girl and a robber, who the little girl wins over in the end. There is a singing diva who begins to sing off tune, upsetting her student, who signs to her to come off stage. He finally takes her away after a physical struggle between the two. Some characters are taken from everyday happenings in Indian society and some belong to the classical Italian form.

These are some of the trends that represented the theatre in 2015. There are many more such plays like Andhayug that take the story from the Mahabharata to make a contemporary point.