Bard in context
SANJAY KUMAR
|
LITERATURE The Capital saw Shakespeare in a new light the other day. An overview.
|
CULTURE: Shakespeare in Kathakali.
THE BARD was thick in the air as scholars, students and theatre enthusiasts grappled with the phenomenon of Shakespeare at the three-day seminar on "Shakespeare - Beyond the Text", organised by the School of Arts and Aesthetics (SAA) of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
The workshop intended to map the discourse of Shakespeare, the multi-faceted playwright and his creative persona in terms of his myriad hues and forms of canonical plays and eponymous sonnets. In her opening remarks, Vishnupriya, a faculty at the school, remarked on the need to bring the Bard outside the `sacred space' of classrooms. The seminar was a sincere effort at taking stock of the state of the art in terms of the huge expanse of the umpteen renderings, adaptations of Shakespearean themes, motifs, plays in theatre, cinema, performing arts in India and abroad.
On the opening day, Saumyabrata Chaudhary, also a faculty at SSA, gave an interesting exposition on `Shakespeare in Recitation'. The emphasis was on the oral renditions of Shakespearean plays in verse. Apart from being the most popular means of teaching Shakespeare, it has an interesting aural history in terms of its change, over the years from a barely intelligible style of the early productions in England to the more realistic style in tune with contemporaneous changes in the vocabulary, tone and inflections of new and modern English. It was remarkable to hear from the audio clips of archival value, how apart from the distinctive oeuvre of the legendary actors on the stage and in cinema, the meanings of the plays have been transmuted by this aural experience. One can discern a slow but definite change from the oratorical to the realistic in the dialogues and monologues.
Interesting metamorphosis
Saumyabrata brought out the metamorphosis of tone, tenor and inflection and intonation of the voices of the actors in cinema and on stage. This interesting bit of audio archives revealed the subtle shift from oratory and declamation to a more earthy conversational English. It also denotes the changing trajectory of the acoustic appropriation of the Bard within the cultural aesthetics of changing times.
The day also witnessed an interesting sharing of theatrical engagement with Shakespeare by Amal Allana, in recounting her directorial venture of King Lear in Hindustani with Manohar Singh playing the theatrically complex character of the eponymous monarch. Subsequently, Samik Bandhyopadhyay, eminent theatre and film critic expounded the theatrical and cinematic world of Shakespearean plays. In his paper on `Shakespeare in Performance: Theatre and Film', he brought home the fascinating world of cinematic adaptations in world cinema.
From the deeply English Lawrence Olivier to the sublime Asian experience of Kurosawa in "Ran and Throne of Blood", the uniqueness of the Shakespearean cinema has been that the performative text has undergone radical mutations in the hands of great masters like Polanski, Brookes and Kurosawa. They are more in the nature of a re-reading of the original text, appropriated to the cultural milieu of a place, age and ideology. Yet, at the performative level each of the filmmakers has rendered a unique reading of the text thus laying testimony to the fecundity of the Shakespearean motifs.
Later on, well-known academics like Keval Arora, Poonam Trivedi, Shiv Prakash, Nitish Kumar and Dileep Kumar brought forth the challenges of teaching Shakespeare in a post-colonial classroom. The problem has been compounded with the changing profile of students and methods and tools of literary appreciation. Shiv Prakash narrated his own experiences of teaching Shakespeare in the regional colleges and firmly asserted that without proper contextualisation learners are bound to get alienated.
Some tragedies
The second day was devoted to the presentation of student projects on the well-known Shakespearean tragedies like "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Othello" and "Hamlet." There was a critical response to these from a galaxy of theatre experts including G.P. Deshpande.
Ashoke Ranade spoke about the essentiality of a cultural understanding of music in cinema. Citing Kurosowa's Shakespearean adaptations as a pertinent case he stated that the subtle resonance of the subtext of music would fall flat unless one deeply studies the nature and form of native Japanese music. The day ended with the screening of the much-acclaimed "King Lear" directed by Grigori Kozintsev.
The concluding day discussed the influence of Shakespeare in India. Shiv Prakash juxtaposed the various influences brought about by adaptation of the Shakespearean text in Indian languages. Interestingly, most of the Indian adaptations, in text and on stage have been with the macro elements of the play-text. Unlike in the West, Indian dramatists seem to have been enamoured by the cosmic nature of the tragedies and the delineation of human character in most of the Bard's works. Students spoke about the regional influences in the literatures of Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi. The concluding session was a sharing of experiences by directors who have engaged with Shakespeare on stage.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
