Bharangam, NSD’s international theatre festival, was perhaps the first in its history of 13 years that did not throw up a single outstanding play. Plays from countries like Japan, USA, Germany and the UK were widely awaited and expected to create some sort of an impression. The South America nations, like Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, had more exciting offerings. The 55-minutes Argentinean, Muare (Spanish), conceived and enacted by Marina Quesada and Natalia Lopez, was a brilliant exposition of physical theatre on the edge of spiritual perception. The only indication that they are at a party is the loud music, the pile of coats on the sofa and the sudden burst of confetti and balloons when the door inadvertently opens.
Moving like broken dolls at points, their bodies repeating the movements as the two women — one tall and gangly, the other short and petite — glide and fall around the stage in a private space they have made their own for the expression of a disconnect, almost nihilistic in effect. Yet the two connect to one another in their fantasies, hopes and despair as they support each other physically. Of the physical theatre there was abundance. The non-verbal physical theatre included productions like the tedious Forest from the USA, and the French acrobatic In Vivo or Within the Living that celebrates dance, its evolution as contemporary dance, “where the dancers enact emotions with their bodies which when transformed into vocabulary, serve to further confirm the original identity of the group.” Their on the edge performance where the dancers balance precariously on wooden frames was breathtaking was thrilling in its tantalising acrobatics.
The Surprised Body Project, staged by Wee, the dance group from Norway and Italy, on the other hand, considers the goal of the body as scornful of athleticism, “the absurd acrobatics of a body in balance, that state of precariousness not only physical, in which one might fall at any moment, even if this does not happen.” There were other groups from India, mostly solo performances like Sweet Sorrow that were abstract physical expressions. Though the presence of choreographed movement is part of theatre, and boundaries between theatre and dance theatre blurring, yet dance has its own generic place in the performing arts vocabulary, and by and large the shows were more appropriate for contemporary dance festivals rather than a theatre festival.
The Manipuri play Samanadraba Mami, directed by Heisnam Tomba, the son of the illustrious theatre couple Kanhailal and Sabitri Debi of Imphal, was one of the most impressive expressions of physical theatre where the body is a highly evolved instrument is in command of weaving opposing elements reality and fantasy, truth and fiction about the nature of the contemporary situation. To break and to build again and again is the lietmotif of the play and d its inherent theme. The group of actors/prisoners from Manipur, Assam and Tripura is led by a woman, an extraordinary actress not singled out in the brochure, who electrified the audience with her intense performance. The manner in which they sing Vaishnava Jana To Tainey kahiye, Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymn, was revolutionary. The precision of the movements in continuum with the voice was a singular experience. The build-up was exactingly structured and there was no confusion in the breakdowns. The play speaks of the manner in which the system in the name of nationalism and religion suppresses dissent and revolt and exploits the people.
Whilst Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s adaptation of Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill as Khatijbai of Kermali Terrace, a play set in Mumbai’s Khoja community about a woman catapulted from penury to becoming the powerful matriarch in a rich family “wrapping the family in the web of her providing” was a perfectly well crafted play performed with élan and scintillating display of talent by Jayati Bhatia, the other plays from Mumbai’s new crop of directors and playwrights like Trishla Patel’s Kumbh Katha require much more work to befit a festival of this caliber. Patel takes up an interesting theme of the nectar or amrit that emerges, from the samudra-manthan or churning of the oceans by the warring asuras and devas, in a kumbh, from which four drops fall in Nasik, Allahabad, Ujjain and Hardwar There is a mysterious fifth drop the search for which forms the narrative of this play to which Trishla tries to give a Bollyood flavour.
It is easy to put in dialogues like “mere paas ma hai” and to have sequences like the lovely anchor to step out of the TV box, put in petty songs and portray the asuras and devas as the good and evil men of the underworld, with kidnappings and the final reunion, but to sustain a structure there has to be an evolved style of presentation. However Trishla Patel is a promising new voice in theatre, much like Ram Ganesh Kamatham from Bengaluru. His Creeper is well-enacted by the duo of Ablilash Majumdar and Mallika Prasad who come on stage as themselves and try and strike a rapport with the audience. They have to do over a black box that oddly moves by itself. Then they play out a poignant love story in which the girl is suffering from a fatal malady. In the closeness of the Bahumukh the in the face intimacy of the actors is somewhat unsetting and effective.
Pravin Kumar Gunjan, who last year gave us the revolutionary Andha Yug as a NSD graduate production, displayed a different interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth that he worked with a new team of actors in Bihar. The inability to translate his ideas due to a raw cast and poor technical aids is unfortunate for from the beginning one could see the newness in his interpretation.
The sensational casting of the three witches as nubile cigarette smoking seductresses enamoured of Macbeth, and each making it plain when they meet him. Banquo is seen as a hail fellow well met sort of comic character. The difference in his attitude and that of Macbeth gave a new interpretation to the scene and ensuing relationship. Lady Macbeth and the murder scenes were however murdered.
Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry’s Chandigarh-based Ther Company’s presentation of the Punjabi adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Wife’s Letter featured Neelam’s favourite actress the sensitive intense and agile Ramanjit Kaur in the title role of a child bride and the detailed action on a set which is a blaze with properties that invoke the environment a hallmark of Neelam’s production design. Into Mrinal’s monotonous and lonely life enters Bindu the orphaned sister of her sister in law. Their absorbing love for each other is the pivot on which the play moves. It is also the subject of enquiry. Is the love Mrinal feels for BIndu maternal? Or is Mrinal trying to regain her lost childhood through her? Or is it a journey of self discovery for both of them?
While Ramanjit/ Mrinal sits typing her letter upstage, downstage the young Mrinal, a brilliant performance in female impersonation by Vansh Bharadwaj, and Bindu well enacted by Gick Grewal frolic in gay abandon. Ramanjit showed her talent in the dramatic sequences and some playful diversions. It is certainly one of the better outings by Neelam’s naqal singers.
As usual there was a huge audience rush for the Pakistani plays. Dara, on the life of Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shahjehan, a scholar of comparative religion, a lover of the arts, a practicing Sufi and above all beloved of the people, ably scripted and directed by Shahid Nadeem, founder and in-house playwright of Ajoka was neat production giving historical data with a sprinkling of creative fiction.
The musical rendition of lyrics of the Sufi poets like Amir Khusrau, Kabir, the naked Sufi Sarmad (who was also an important character in the play) and Dara Shikoh by a live chorus is very well done. In contrast the play Khawbon ke Musafir, written by Imtiaz Hussain 50 two years ago and directed by Zia Mohyeddin, one time famous as the first Asian actor in the West End and on Broadway and currently the director of the National Academy of Performing Arts, Pakistan, has nothing to commend itself in terms of theatre, neither the ugly box set nor the static style of acting.
The German play this time What Happened? The 80*81 Findings was interesting. Directors Georg Diex and Christopher Roth decide that 80=81 represent a major shift in world history, the Great Transition. Tongue firmly in cheek they speak of “telling the story of postmodernism in reverse to get a retrofuturistic narrative out of the plethora and confusion of (hi)stories. We see a procession in Rishikesh with huge masks of Ayatollah Khomeini, Nicholas Ceausescu, Ronald Reagan, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Dhirendra Brahmachari accompanied by inanely spoken remarks like who is this Mr Reagan? Is communism good or bad? How did Sanjay Gandhi die? Heard the god man was sleeping with Mrs. Gandhi! In Rishikesh the Beatles making music at the ashram of Maharishi yogi are mercilessly ribbed. Then comes the dip in the Ganga River and the final cleansing. But in its centennial year 2081 the question remains. Did it really end?
The Amorous Lotus Pan by the Chinese Academy of Drama is a delightful musical play or opera about a young girl forced to choose between becoming a concubine of a lecher marrying a hideous dwarf chooses the latter of the two evils. But when she falls in love with the dwarf’s handsome brother the choice is more difficult. Pan the heroine of the opera chooses to kill the dwarf in order to be with her beloved. But he is not willing to accept her as she is his brother’s wife. Pan figures in one of the four great classic novels in Chinese literature and is synonymous with the vamp as per traditional definition.
To contemporise the story a chorus — one of the most lively and intelligent aspects of thee play — is introduced that comes in at crucial points to question and comment on Pan’s actions.
In the end when they are both dead the beautiful and talented actress playing Pan, Li Yequing, asks the audience “If I were Pan what would I choose? What could I do?” The training process follows Chinese aesthetic traditions as well as developments in western contemporary theatre. The idea is to unite the training of professional competence with inculcation of moral attitudes. Another theatre that explores the traditional art in cultural antiquity and modern theatrical forms for innovative dynamic performance is Chorea of Poland.
Their Songs of Euripides, directed by the cult figure Tomasz Rodowisz, was an experience in the atmospheric creation of sound, movement and gesture in space.
Revolving round the women called Bacche, the performance focuses on the reading of the choric part of Euripides plays through gesture, dance and music and search for new images to communicate to the world.
The performance was a new sensation of physical theatre. The sounds permeated he senses and the bodies on stage assumed forms grotesque, angelic beautiful and ugly.