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All for a play

Other plays were pedaloes. Only Maa Bhoomi was a racer. Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy rides on his recollections, P.S. BHAT refracts his musings

1948 PERFORMANCE OF Maa Bhoomi (Left to right) Mikkilineni Seeta Ratnam, Suryakanta, Mikkilineni and Kosuri Punnaiah

A play is a disciplined and organic entity. It is cajoled by actors alone. They must physically possess it to make it big. It happens that way for any good play like Ma Bhoomi. An Octogenarian, Mikkilineni sits pensive in his easy chair recalling his eventful life of a responsive communist, always on the edge of threat from the police. On one occasion, he was allowed to pay a fine of Rs. 25, but he preferred to serve the jail term for a week. He was jailed seven times and a couple of charges were so laden to dispatch him to Andaman jail. Born in 1916 at Lingayapalem and brought up at Kolavennu, he was initiated to the Leftist ideology by M.Akkaiah.

While donning the roles in the reformist plays of Kallakuri, he was drafted in 1936 by Maddukuri Chandrasekhara Rao to the State wing of Praja Natya Mandali, a cultural outfit of the Communist Party of India.

Immense popularity

Very soon Maa Bhoomi a play on the deprived and the atrocities of the ruling class, written by Vasireddy & Sunkara was taken up by legendary director G.Raja Rao with Mikkilineni, Sarojini, Kosuri Punnaiah and others in the cast.

Mikkilineni was also a leader of the team of folk narratives like Burra Katha and Jamukula Katha. Tensile and metrical, his rendering of the narrative of Jamukula Katha was so absorbing and veneered that thousands of listeners at Lakshmi Talkies, Vijayawada, refused to leave the spot even after the end of the event.

With a twinkle in his eyes, he recalls the immense popularity of the play Maa Bhoomi: "No other social play in Telugu can be compared to it. In just one year in `47-48, it created history of sorts before it was banned by the Madras Government. It has such an explosive social content and emotional packing that it has a vision for the oppressed and a vitality for uprising. It roused the aspiration of the audience and imagination of the actors alike, charging all the ingredients of a visual treat displaying dynamics of a moving machine, fast and perfect.

In a year about 1,000 shows by 125 units of Praja Natya Mandali around the State were planned with great enthusiasm. When we performed the play at Rama Talkies in Vijayawada, the audience present on the evening demanded a repeat performance which went till 3.30 in the morning.

Ban orders

At Sholapur, a 10,000-strong crowd requested a repeat edition paying out a rupee and half-a-rupee per ticket. "As the play was banned in the State, we took it around Bombay, Pune, Ahmedabad and Sholapur.

At Bombay, Pruthvi Raj Kapoor, Abbas, De Silva and others were there, to see the play.

At Sholapur, the great Bala Gandharvawaiting for his performance on the same dais came up and congratulated us. "Later Balaraj Sahani on a visit to a training camp at Rajahmundry confessed that he molded his character in Do Bigha Zameen only after seeing the role of an illiterate cowherd played by Punnaiah at Bombay.

"Before the ban, when we staged Maa Bhoomi at Rasikaranjani Sabha at Madras, elite of the city, including Goodavalli Rama Brahmam, Govindarajula, Kala Venkatra Rao, Bezawada Gopala Reddy, Gidugu, was present to witness the performance.

They complimented us so profusely that we were awestruck. But a quirky twist awaited us at Vijayawada. When we returned to these parts of the State, the play was proscribed and Communist Party & Praja Natya Mandala were banned.

The ban was brutally enforced to ramshackle all our set properties and destroy the party office.

It was so ignominious that about 400 workers of the party between the age group of 20 and 70 years were paraded naked around the Gandhi Statue at the Katuru Centre."

All that was for staging a play.

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