This year the final year students of the National School of Drama staged two plays instead of the usual one as their farewell production. The plays are wildly different in style and both had Santanu Bose’s “conceptual guidance” euphuism for direction. The common elements are violence leading to killings and the physical approach to acting. Both have a serial killer as the focus for trying to understand the culture of violence. Relativity or Township Stories, by Mpumelelo Paul Groottoom and Presley Chaweneyagae, is a potent and disquieting play about a profoundly traumatised and disempowered culture in post-apartheid South Africa.
Much of the success for the play goes to the clever choice of the environment. The several roofs of the outhouses of Bhawalpur House provided the right space for the games between the police and the culprits. The tall spiral staircase on the right of the acting area could have had more interplay. It was dramatically used by the drunk friend of the inebriated man whose aspiring wife caught in the colonial past leaves him for a man called “love more”.
The disturbed daughter of the inebriated man runs away with “g string” killer, who hunts down women at night. The man hired to kill the killer is a police officer who sexually abuses his son; then there is the tavern owner who seduces the young man in love with her daughter, and the ghost of the son’s mother who comes to the father and son in moments of deep anguish. However, the hope for the redemption for the father and he is shot dead in a confrontation.
This world of violence and desperate loving, with death ever present is wonderfully captured by the cast of intrepid players. Their makeup by N.G. Roshan is authentic and the costumes are suitable. Acting inputs by Adil Husssain in both the production has given an edge to the ability of the students to react to the situations in the drama.
The simultaneous presentation of R/Z written by the young French writer Bernard-Marie Koltes — who was born in Metz in 1948, became famous at the age of 22 and died of AIDS in Paris when he was 41 years old — is a first in the NSD. It gives a chance of participation by almost the entire class. There are seven players in R/Z, (plus two non-speaking roles); all the seventeen actors have roles they can enjoy in Relativity.
Koltes is an important figure in world theatre, whose plays represent an effort to expose reality, not as pathetic or nostalgic, but as it is difficult, disintegrated, tattered, shabby and condensed. and above all fatal yet funny. Survival is what arouses the characters, who charge on stage propelled by their cravings and dreams. Koltes’ uniqueness is in the topicality and realism of his characters — realism we have difficulty in seeing because of our unwillingness to look into those dark corners. Koltes travelled widely. He visited the US, Canada, Russia, Mali, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal. These journeys became the source material for the 10 plays that he wrote with burning lyricism and uncompromising humanity.
The story of R/Z is based upon a newspaper report about a 15- year-old youth who murdered his parents. During his final escape, he murdered a police officer. Took hostages and kills them too. Following his return to prison, he was finally admitted to a psychiatric institution where he committed suicide: Roberto Stucco’s first killing was the strangling of his parents in 1981.
The play is mounted on the Abhimanch stage with tiered seating in front rising steeply to the top. The effect is that of a studio theatre. The drama unfolds on an empty stage with lights chasing Roberto, played by Prashant Kumar, as he runs away from prison. Kumar bursts on to the stage to the sound of whistles as the police officers come on. The sets are impressionistic with clean lines, designed in an open, unique multi-locational space. The mother’s house has a huge door and a table as prominent pieces. There is a tussle at the door before he breaks in. A scared mother asks him why he murdered his father. He hugs her. She sighs contently. He suddenly lets go of her. She slides to the ground. He has strangled her.
He meets the girl, played by Amanjeet Broch, near a sand pit down center. The sand pit goes all along the apron area of the performing space. It is used to hide Roberto’s backpack, his gun and the dead body of his victim. The playfulness between the girl and Roberto reveals his gentler side. She asks his name, and he says he is an undercover agent so cannot reveal his identity.
The girl’s family comprises a drunken father, who is also the police sergeant on Roberto’s trail, is played by Debasish Mondol. Prakriti plays the woebegone mother, a bald lady with wig to cover the head. She also plays the elegant lady whom Roberto meets and whose car he steals after shooting her young son dead. Antony Janagi plays the sister. As the prostitute, she sells her wares in the shadowy Paris streets depicted down stage; the lighting is superb, it plays an important role in transmitting the “colour” of the scenes. The scenes change very fast, moving from one location to another without disturbing the overall theatrical image.
After her brother, played by Hardik Shah, sells her to a pimp, the girl lives the life of a prostitute. The interaction between the elegant lady and Roberto is very dramatic. The suspense is built up well. The police is on to Roberto. It knows about his love for the girl. She is bought to identify him. Initially, she forgets his name as he told her she would. On the final arrest she goes to him calling his name, confesses that she has betrayed him, and says she wants to stay with him forever. The play is marked by excellent atmospheric sound design, lighting and some good performances. However, the text is not easily accessible and needs some expalanatory notes in the brochure rather than the criminal’s gallery currently on view.