Exploring life, differently
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This past week saw two `must-see' plays - Maya Rao's "Heads Are Meant For Walking Into" and Manish and Zulekha Chaudhari's "Siddhartha". ROMESH CHANDER
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Maya Rao is a well-known name in the world of dance and theatre. Her stand-up comedy, built on current political events and social issues has been well received throughout the country. For the last few years she has been exploring cross-media particularly the use of film and music to delve deep into different layers of life and in the process she walks into her own life. For instance in "Departures", "The 4-Wheel-Drive", "Come-to-me Mr. Sharma", "Body-Fat-Murdered-Shaw", "A Deep Fried Jam" and "A Deeper Fried Jam" that we have seen earlier. And now in her latest presentation "Heads Are Meant For Walking Into" that opened this past week at Habitat Centre, Maya Rao goes much ahead and explores life - the life as she experienced around her using a camera as a director would use the actors.
As the stage slowly lights up we see a small model of a house upstage and while Maya slowly walks up to it the model gets enlarged and in a beautiful voice we hear her say to herself, "When I look out of my window do I know what I see?" A beautiful prelude to what we are about to see.
The light shifts to our protagonist sitting on her desk downstage writing a letter: "You won't hear from me for sometime - I have shut my window to shut out the flood." Upstage on the screen the world is crowding on her, she gets up from her desk and goes towards the screen as if into the world. Surjit Sarkar's video visuals are indeed dramatic and essential ingredients of Maya Rao's production design.
Our protagonist's journey into the world of a common man is clustered with household things, utensils, cheap glass tumblers, kondapali dolls of different sizes that fit into each other are used to hit out against the politicians without naming any one.
As we go along we see a ritualistic pouring of teaand in the steamy haze we hear soft musical notes created with common household metallic objects like a thali, pots and pans, spoons and knives and what have you. The mood changes and to underline the suppression of women Maya takes cue from a recent newspaper report that some girls in Imphal had unrobed in public to protest t their suppression in male dominated society. Maya's presentation of the incident with a just a Manipuri shawl beautifully underlined how women are fighting for their rights. We have yet another icon, this time Sharmila who in her fight to live in dignity has been on hunger strike and force-fed for the last four years. The presentation in which theatre music and video fuse to create a new genre of cross-media theatre is so far the best that Maya Rao's group Vismayah has presented in this new genre of cross-media theatre. The presentation must not only be kept alive but it needs indepth discussion by theatre professionals and students of theatre.
Body Language
We had yet another performance this past week in a different genre. The husband-wife team of Manish Chaudhari and Zulekha of Performers At Work have been developing what may be called, Theatre of Body Language. Their latest work "Siddharatha" based on the novel by Hermann Hesse and starring Manish Chaudhary is a long leap forward in his projection of a new histrionic form that depends more on body movement rather than words.
Briefly "Siddharatha" is a saga of life passing through ascetism and withdrawal from the world to a life of decadence and riches when he meets a rich merchant and a beautiful courtesan Kamala. The story throughout is told from the perspectives of four characters; Siddhartha's father, Kamala, the courtesan, Kamaswami, the rich merchant and Siddhartha's son, but never by Siddharatha himself, thus exploring perception rather than embodiment. The director makes the journey a central motif and a metaphor around which the play is conceived.
The opening scene is like a prologue in which we learn Siddhartha is seeking something but what it is we don't know. Through Manish's body movement we get a sense of a journey and with a perfect control of body and movement of joints Manish slowly evolves from a quadra-ped to a bi-ped projecting the process of evolution spread over a period of centuries.
In the next unit loneliness takes over, then on to a world full of other people like the courtesan and the rich merchant are cast in a different mould. The final unit mirrors first Siddhartha's son leaving,is full of sorrow and grief and the story has come a full circle. Manish has mastered the technique of using every part of his body that can be moved. Nissar Allana's set and light design is complementary to Sulekha's overall production design.
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Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
