No vision of the invisible minority
DIWAN SINGH BAJELI
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"No Exit" failed to open a window to the real world of people on the fringes of our society.
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EXPERIMENTAL a SCENE FROM THE PLAY, "No Exit"
The National School of Drama's third year diploma production of an adapted version of Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit" presented at its premises this past week is an experimental and innovative theatrical piece. The emphasis appears to be on form at the cost of content. The design, the stylized light effects and the colour tend to create external ambience that dazzle the eye but fail to create an internal rhythm to convey the inherent philosophy of the play blended with its thematic content to strip the audience emotionally and intellectually.
Written by Supriya Shukla, the text is devised by the performers themselves. It is directed and designed by N. Krithika. "No Exit" is considered Sartre's best play. A French philosopher, novelist and dramatist (1905-1980), Sartre was the foremost champion of the philosophy of existentialism. `Hell is other people' is the thematic content of "No Exit". The play depicts three lost souls who are guilty of committing crimes. One is a sadist, another homosexual and the third one is a whore. They are confined to a place where they suffer. There is no escape. Here is a place where there is no room for hope, human dignity, love and death. It is a state of eternal monotony and torture. The original play is remarkable for its intensity. It is a deeply felt bitter and resentful comment on human situation.
Not taut
The adapted version is unable to provide us with tense moments. Kritika has designed her production in the open air on the lawns with the audience sitting on three sides. The use of bright colours can be treated as a part of existentialist tradition.
The play opens with the entry of bridegroom and his bride, performing marriage rituals. They are joined with a chain fastened to their ankles. They ascend through stairs on a raised structure and occupy their seats. Boxes of varied sizes in garish colours are placed all round them. There is little communication between them. The face of the bride continues to be brightened up with broad smiles. They observe what goes down a specially formed structure. Inside this structure first enters eunuch. There are two graves on the either side of the structure from which emerge two female characters and enter the same place where the eunuch is confined. Gradually they reverse their crimes committed when they were alive.
Going through bibliography and flexography mentioned in the pamphlet distributed just before the show begins, it appears that the director and her team are interested in issues like homosexuality and prostitution. And marriage too.
Showing the bride and bridegroom in chains is too obvious to suggest that the marriage institution is a prison. The original play conveys the profound study in monotony and the despair and eternal torture in human situation.
Those discerning audience who came to see the serious work by a great intellectual of modern times felt disappointed to watch the adapted version.
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