The return of Karnad
GAUTAM CHATTERJEE
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Conversation Girish Karnad has written a new play "A Heap of Broken Images", which he directs in English and Kannada.
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THOUGHTFUL AGAIN: Girish Karnad's new play "A Heap of Broken Images" brings forth the pain of regional writers.
The play is on Indian writers in English. And the story spins around a professor of English who is also a Kannada writer. She writes short stories in Kannada but is not successful. Eventually, she writes an English book that becomes a bestseller, making her an international celebrity. But at the end of it, her screen image starts to question her.
Weaving together this thoughtful story is the new one-act play, "A Heap of Broken Images", by one of India's pre-eminent contemporary playwrights, Girish Karnad. And the writer of such moving plays like "Yayati", "Raktakalyana", "Agni Aur Barkha" and "Nagamandala" is himself directing this play in both Kannada and English.
Talking about his personal experience from where this play has sprung, he clarifies, "There is a dilemma about whether or not writing in English leaves you out of an entire participative process, reducing your readers. All of us, including writers, have become a part of the worldwide consumer market. The play revolves around the electronic age and images that fling themselves at us. A regional language writer wants to use the Internet, but it is essentially an English-language medium. I could never invent a plot. Technology has such an impact on our lives that I wanted to show the public mask we keep. This play compelled itself."
The play is set in a TV studio. Its first production in Kannada recently left the audience of his hometown Bangalore spellbound. Arundhati Nag performed the solo play. Unlike Karnad's earlier plays, this one is somewhat autobiographical. "You can say that. We dig into ourselves when we write and direct," agrees Karnad.
Play analysis
But Kannada drama, in its anxiety to become different from commercial drama, has become more and more literary with the influence of Ibsen and Shaw. It began tackling the problems of our society. Karnad's "Yayati" is a totally different kind of drama. So is "Tughlaq".
"When I wrote `Yayati', I was influenced by European playwrights like Sartre, Camus and others. I wrote `Tughlaq' after my return from Oxford University in 1960. No one had thought of putting `Yayati' on the stage then. I thought, why not write a play on a grand scale, involving about 50 characters! So I wrote `Nadedu Banda Dari'. `Yayati' imitated the form of modern western drama. Manytry to discover the influence of Brecht in my plays, which is not there at all. `Tughlaq' has the spaciousness of our commercial drama," says Karnad.
"Tuglaq" was first was staged in The National School of Drama and the late Om Shivpuri directed it in 1965.
"Hayavadana", his third play, borrows its idiom from folk theatre. "I am convinced that there is no difference between the theatre conventions of classical drama and those of folk drama. The principles that govern their dramatic aesthetics are the same. It seems to me that among 10 forms of drama identified by Bharata, some must have been folk forms. `Bhana' for example. `Hayavadana' made a beginning and since then, many such plays have come up. For instance, Chandra Shekher Kambar's `Jokumaraswamy' and Vijay Tendulkar's `Ghasiram Kotwal'," he states. "Drama is a means of self-expression for me. Drama can be the production of meaning also. I did not create the story of `Nagamadala'. It was already there and the play simply creates devices for the telling of that story," he elaborates. Karnad's first love is Kannada, but he writes both in Kannada and English. "I have become a bilingual writer over the years through various processes. My mother tongue is Konkani but I grew up speaking Kannada. Whereas I speak only in English with my wife and children though they know Kannada!" he exclaims.
What would be next, Karnad is not sure. "I trace silence but not silently. I am following as my fate dictates."
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