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Of appearance and reality
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Two plays of the MetroPlus Theatre Festival use television and technology to juxtapose fact and fiction, says MUKUND PADMANABHAN
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PHOTOS: K. PICHUMANI
A GOOD START Arundhati Raja's performance had the stamp of credibility
A HEAP OF
BROKEN IMAGES
"I wrote the novel in English because it burst out in English... .What baffles me — actually, let me confess, hurts me — is why our intellectuals can't grasp this simple fact," says a defiant Manjula Nayak in the confrontational prelude that prepares the emotional ground for Girish Karnad's "A Heap of Broken Images." Manjula, a run-of-the-mill writer in Kannada, who has suddenly catapulted to fame and fortune after publishing a hugely successful novel in English, is defending herself against critics who accuse her of having "betrayed" her mother tongue.
The middle-aged writer, played with the right touch of belligerent anxiety by Arundhati Raja, makes her challenging pitch for a television broadcast, which is to precede the airing of a serial based on her novel. And her spirited attack on vernacular chauvinism - during which she revels in her royalties, exposes the envy of her detractors and makes references to Nabokov, Conrad and Rushdie - is thinly disguised on what is almost certainly Karnad's own experience of being criticised as a so-called deracinated and westernised playwright.
In a way, the narrative element in the play really begins when a self-satisfied Manjula, having finished her broadcast ("Good. I have taken enough shit from them," she smirks), prepares to walk off the stage, when she is confronted with her sceptical, mocking and seemingly omniscient Image that appears on a TV screen in the studio.
Monologue morphs into a dialogue of sorts as Manjula grapples with Manjula, fact is juxtaposed with fiction and appearance collides rudely with reality. The interesting twist of course is that in Karnad's clever script, it is the virtual that is the real.
Subjecting the writer to an interrogation that teases, taunts and finally strips the secrets from her soul, the Image reveals the sordid truth about Manjula's marriage, her far from easy relationship with her dead sister Malini and the mysterious circumstances in which the best-selling novel was written and published.
With her arms disbelievingly crossed, her eyebrows quizzically raised and her steady gaze of gentle incredulity, Raja played the Image with a cool assurance. In juxtaposition, her rendition of Manjula, who finds her conceits punctured and her deceptions gradually exposed, had the stamp of credibility, particularly when forced into anger or emotional collapse.
A high energy act by the three young women
A triumph of technology and timing, the 55-minute play directed by Karnad and K.M. Chaitanya progressed towards a tight and stirring finish as Manjula seems to morph into the Image which then morphs into Malini as "differences of ink and blood and language" are obliterated in a babel of voices and a jumble of television images.
(Performed by Ranga Shankara at the Music Academy at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on August 5)
Creeps
Three teenaged girls, each of whom is led to believe she has already been selected as the host for an MTV-like lifestyle show, find themselves unexpectedly pitted against each other in a television studio. The audition, which is conducted by a disembodied voice, leads Petra, Marien and Lilly to tear at each other in a competition that peels the layers of their false conceits and their synthetic self-images.
The rewards are instant fame and money, and the girls — who come from diverse social and economic backgrounds — are acutely aware that bagging the job could alter their lives ("This isn't a school picnic with a treasure hunt, this is a job in TV for eight grand every month... VIP lounge, free tickets... this is the real hardcore stuff," says one of them.)
Written by a German playwright (Lutz Hubner), "Creeps" is a dark and sinister comedy that explores the illusory reality of the television medium, its capacity to falsify identities and manipulate images to further its corporate conspiracy. Director Atul Kumar's production — which takes place on a fashionably decadent set with tinselled streamers, a slinky settee and luridly-coloured toilet seats — is decidedly high on energy. His projection of the young women as screeching, wobbly and emotionally vulnerable and the taut and attitude-driven nature of their verbal exchanges, lent the play the edgy, animated intensity that was necessary to make the production work.
While the play demanded a degree of farcical overacting — in order to contrast the girls as wannabe television stars with their true selves, after their facades have been cruelly blown off — there were moments, particularly in the beginning, when the performance seemed a tad too self-consciously histrionic. There was also the matter of an unfortunate glitch in the sound, but the three women deserve to be credited for not letting this deter them in any noticeable way.
Shubhavi K. as the upper-class Lilly was full of blustery confidence, Anuja Ghosalkar K. as the East German Petra was convincing in her false bravado and Priya Venkataraman as Marien was particularly good in her anxious sincerity, which came through with a funny pathos when she croaked and wheezed through a song for the audition. Arno (Sameer Sheikh), the TV producer who never comes on stage and who eventually ends up infuriating the girls into forging an alliance against him, deserves a special mention — his voice full of silken menace and silver-tongued duplicity.
The English translation of Hubner's play leaves the distinctly German references as they are. One suspects that some of these — particularly those that dealt with Petra's East German origin — were better left out in order to lend the production a somewhat more universal character. But to be fair, they did not mar a play that was marked by a vivid and hearty vitality.
(Performed by The Company Theatre at Music Academy on August 6)
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