Bharangam: Few plays to stay in memory

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The National School of Drama’s 14th Bharangam theatre festival is now in its second week. The count on the fingers of one hand the plays that will remain in memory.

The plays from Manipur were rich in content, visuals and performances. For starters there was Ratan Thiyam’s highly-polished, visually-stunning and well-enacted version of Rabindranath Tagore’s symbolic drama King Of The Dark Chamber staged as the curtain raiser. Mr Thiyam’s work is invariably a hallmark of conceptual brilliance in its scenic design.
That talent runs in the family is certainly true in the case of Heisnam Tomba, the son of the legendary theatre couple Heisnam and Savitri Devi, who set up Kalakshetra in Imphal, Manipur. Heisnam Tomba absorbed the finer nuances of theatre art as a young theatre worker.
Besides having written four plays, Mr Tomba has directed more than six dramas, including Kumgi Nong Hijam Hiren and the production that he presented at the festival, Tagore’s Khudita Pashan.
Mr Tomba specialises in voice and movement training, the excellence of his concept of body and voice was evident in the play where three statues come alive at night and transform themselves into enchantresses for the night and tempt and overpower them. The cries uttered by the three statues as they enter the stage and the movements of their body in rhythmic consort with the sound and the emotion is a miraculous creation and brilliantly executed by S. Bembem and Radhika Rabha. Mythical Surren-der, another good Manipuri play written by Budha Chingtham and directed by Ningthouja Deepak, speaks of counter insurgency and the military combing operations conducted in the Northeastern region of Manipur. Shaneri lives in a floating hut with her husband on the Loktam Lake. One day she is raped by a serpent-like human who comes in a gang that kills her husband. She goes through her pregnancy in the apprehensive fear for what she is carrying in her womb. Nepram Dhanapati brings a rare dignity to her suffering, making her plight appear a communion occurrence. Even her copious weeping has a melodious sound as she questions herself about the bearing of a child who is doomed to violence and hate against the human being. As the child grows up, it displays more and more traits of the “snake men”. The child is taken away to the snake man’s hideout, which is situated on the other side of the lake where men are brought, tortured, and killed. Killing now is part of the boy’s blood. On a visit to his mother, he nonchalantly shoots and kills his grandfather and his guide. Despite his mother telling who the man he aiming at is. Shaneri then picks up a gun and shoots her son.
The backdrop of the painted curtain depicting a lake is made more realistic by the continuous sound of water hitting against the shore and the boats that dock at the hut. These boats on rollers with people pretending to row are effective on stage. There is a dramatically symbolic scene of girls fishing in the lake. They find no fish until the final attempt they all come up with the corpses of newborn humans.
The two Polish plays were notable for different reasons. The Chorus Of Women, directed by Marta Gornicka with a large group of women who speak of their problems and express their thoughts on various issues, is basically an ongoing process of defining femininity in a positive way that gets to the truth and at the same time avoids stereotypes. 25-30 women of varying ages were on stage speaking, shouting, singing, chanting, whispering disagreements on imposed ideas and images of femininity.
Sometimes it was a solo voice making a personal remark, but largely it was the group talking directly to the audience. There is conductor to guide them through the performance. For Marta this is a modern day tragic chorus of women and her way of restoring the Greek chorus and its dimensions of the tragic lost by modern drama. She wants to find new for the theatrical presence of the chorus. Marta says,” the chorus of women will shout whisper and sing. — It will treat words like music. It will change language into voice. It will imitate its subversive force.”
Gtotowski: An Attempt To Retreat, presented by the Chorea theatre association, Lodz, Poland, was subtitled, A group collaboration. Though it was cast as a personal play witn young actors speaking in English and Polish (there were subtitles in English) who reached out for Grotowski, since he harmonised with their sense of alienation and disorientation. Also much like the group, he placed extreme demands on himself and was disappointed. They find in him a partner to discuss even an embarrassing subject.
“Do we want Grotowski? How much do they know Growtowski? What does Grotowski mean for this generation?” asks Tomasz Radowiscz , the actor, musician, director and teacher, in his opening introductory monologue.
Addressing the actors, who were standing on the opposite side of the stage, directly, he asked “Who is Growtoski to you? You did not see any of his collaborations? You did not meet him? You only know his texts. You know he was a serious writer. Declaring that what we were about to see was not a performance but a theatrical project. It was about a historical figure who created a special type of theatre.