When Edgar Allan Poe meets Mahesweta Devi

“The idea is to introduce the public to some of the classic writers in an age when the very act of reading has become a dinosaur,” says thespian K. C. Shankar who will be performing Edgar Allan Poe’s A Tell Tale Sign in the city. The Phoenix Players is a theatre group established in 1984, by theatre veterans Salim Ghouse and Anita Salim. As a part of their theatre outreach program for the student fraternity, Stepping Stage proposes to introduce writings and stories from diverse sources through storytelling performances and workshops. “The motivating impulse is to introduce and inculcate different points of view: using language, gesture and behaviour; to put the onus on the actor completely without the support of sets and props, and allow the audience to participate in the shared common experience,” says Shankar.

Still Life—The search of Meaning and Understanding is an hour-long performance by Shankar and Anita Salim. “It’s a journey into despair and lonliness; a world of angst and neurosis,” says Shankar who has made an attempt to put in front of his audience a profile of guilt and crime.

Anita enacts Mahesweta Devi’s Kunti and Nishadin. Talking about the performance, Shankar harps back to the oral traditions and he insists Stepping Stage, of which Still Life is a part, is a tribute to that form. “With every storyteller, the interpretation (of a text) changes; we have tried to reinterpret in different ways. Usually, it’s Salim saab (Ghouse) who comes up with the ideas. But it is the quality of literary works, the masterpieces that open up so many possibilities,” he adds.

Still Life was launched in 2011 and since then, the actors have performed it close to fifty times. “In our earlier performances, we used make up, costumes and lights. But soon we thought of making it as minimal as possible. With lights and sets, the audience’s attention shifts from the performance. But when the actor is stripped from the setting, it becomes equally challenging for the audience as for the actor,” he explained, an idea that appears to resonate with Albert Camus’ idea of absurdity.

The actor also pointed out the relevance of the two texts in the current situation. “A Tell Tale Sign is about the self in the context of society. It talks about extreme isolation and who is a madman in the society. In Mahasweta Devi’s Kunti and Nishadin, where Kunti is introspecting after the war, she examines her role in the war and had she not been silent, perhaps the war could have been avoided. But the more pertinent character is Nishadin who asks questions of true patriotism and asks us to reflect on the collective responsibilities and society.”

On December 5 and 6, 8 pm, At The Jeff Goldberg Studio, Gazebo House, 133 Hill Road, Bandra (West) Entry: Rs 300