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`Theatre must communicate'
PHOTO: R. SHIVAJI RAO
"Would he like to talk to me," asks Indira Parthasarathi, doubtfully. The same question is echoed in the same tone by Na Muthuswami. But, when they meet on a leisurely afternoon, it is with the ease of old friends.
In a language not known for its playwriting tradition, these two Tamil writers opted to script plays. Parthasarathi's urge to create "Pasi," "Aurangzeb" and "Ramanujar" was very different from Muthuswami's need to pen "Kalankalamaga," "England" and "Narkalikarar." Later, their hands-on efforts in teaching theatre were likewise motivated by differing contexts. After teaching Tamil in Delhi and Warsaw, Parthasarathi headed the centre for performing arts at the Pondicherry University. Muthuswami set new trends by launching Koothu-p-Pattarai, a professional repertory in Chennai, to train theatre workers. As the playwrights reminisce and argue, they express anxieties about present-day trends in Tamil theatre.
Gowri Ramnarayan records the conversation.
Parthasarathi: I was brought up in Madras and Kumbakonam. I went to school only at age 9. I had a home tutor before that. Weak in Tamil and Maths, I revelled in Shakespeare and Tolstoy.
Muthuswami: My background is totally different. Born in a village agraharam, I haunted the lanes inhabited by different communities. To my family's dismay, I spoke their dialect, watched their activities — whether at fishing or at the butcher's. I refused to take up a regular job. I tried farming, introduced new methods. The rains ruined my efforts. I came to Madras without a job. Luckily, my wife was working here.
Parthasarathi: I had my ways of rebelling too. My Sanskrit scholar father was shocked to discover I was studying Tamil in college, instead of English. `The boy's horoscope predicts he will study neecha bhasha (ignoble language),' he shrugged.
Muthuswami: (Laughing) I was instrumental in forming a DMK chapter in my village.
Parthasarathi: I was attracted to Marxism in college, and was highly critical of Gandhi. But when he was assassinated I realised just what he meant to me. The Communists wanted to organise a rally to condemn the RSS and I left the party saying mourning should precede protest.
Muthuswami: I too gave up party connections after coming to Madras.
Parthasarathi: (Impishly) I was deeply moved by Shelley's verse and his student tract "The Necessity for Atheism" which got him expelled from the university. But I stopped writing verse when I realised what I wrote was not poetry.
Muthuswami: My influences came from Tamil, not English. My first verses in traditional metres were circulated as Pongal greetings. When I joined veteran C. S. Chellappa's literary movement, I wrote Pudu Kavidai (New Poetry) but he rejected my work.
Parthasarathi: (Irritated) Why call it new? It's old now.
Muthuswami: (Pacifically) Exaggerations, even distortions, are part of protest, necessary for developing radical trends. You can't deny that after Sangam literature, Tamil saw such fine nuances only in Pudu Kavidai. It brought about a fresh, dynamic perspective.
Parthasarathi: Fracturing sentences is not poetry.
Muthuswami: No. But criticism can weed out the bad stuff. My inspiration to write plays came from New Poetry. When I wrote "Kalankalamaga" I'd neither seen plays, nor knew dramatic structure. I'd watched a lot of Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance like Martha Graham's. So my play was more a dance of words... Living in Delhi, you were exposed to all kinds of experimental theatre.
Parthasarathi: Yes... I adore, worship and revere Shakespeare. Indubitably he is the best. I'd seen western productions of Shakespeare, but Ebrahim Alkazi's adaptation astounded me. I didn't know Shakespeare could be done like that!
Muthuswami: Chellappa wanted to stop with poetry and criticism. We youngsters disagreed, we wanted to launch a theatre movement.
Parthasarathi: But Chellappa himself wrote a play! I was alienated from all these exciting polemics. Delhi was a vacuum as far as Tamil was concerned. My first play was an adaptation of my novella "Oonam." "Mazhai" was commissioned as a novel, but the theme demanded a play.
Muthuswami: When did you stage it?
Parthasarathi: I was thrilled to find that I had a natural affinity for that genre. Didn't worry about staging it. Someone did eventually stage "Mazhai." He got married. That man who put it up in Sri Lanka got married to his actress. So far "Mazhai" has brought about four marriages. (Turning to the reporter) Please write this. Let's see if the play gets staged for this reason alone.
Muthuswami: Reading Ionesco was to know freedom! I knew then that you can write anything in a play, in any way. But there were no performers. So I started training people.
Parthasarathi: I had no such opportunities in Delhi. That's why, when asked to teach Tamil in Pondicherry, I said start a drama department and I'll come. They actually did! But tell me, why are there no new entrants into serious theatre in Tamil Nadu?
Muthuswami: No audience.
Parthasarathi: In Delhi, my plays were put up by a regular theatre group. The audiences were the same people who came to see other plays. My play was not deemed `different' or experimental.
Muthuswami: Narada Gana Sabha tried to showcase serious matinees and popular evening shows.
Parthasarathi: I was invited to watch my play. Huge hall. Eight spectators. I was lonely. Scared. At the end a man told me, `Don't go, the real play will start now.' I wonder if we are driving people away from our plays by stamping them as highbrow, parallel theatre.
Muthuswami: Koothu-p-Pattarai has faced similar situations.
Parthasarathi: I conducted multilingual theatre festivals in Pondicherry, remember? We packed the hall.
Muthuswami: There's nothing else in Pondy.
Parthasarathi: Chennai is a synthetic city.
Muthuswami: Theatre cannot survive without subsidies.
Parthasarathi: Theatre is a social institution, It must communicate.
Muthuswami: But you must admit there is a difference between our kind of theatre and popular theatre. Today, Tamil theatre has cinema for its model.
Parthasarathi: California Sangam or Chinglepet Manram, it's all habituated to empty wordplay and puerile humour. I feel concerned.
Muthuswami: Things are changing a bit now. Fed up with the computer-IT routine, dwindling human contacts, and failing relationships, young people want to come out and breathe. They may eventually gravitate towards good theatre.
Parthasarathi: Will they?
Muthuswami: The conviction that theatre is part of life has not taken hold here.
Parthasarathi: You're saying that people must identify themselves with the theatre. How?
Muthuswami: We must go on doing theatre. Good theatre. Sincerely. To the best of our ability.
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