FOCUS

Nautanki is a popular form of traditional theatre in the northern region of India especially in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Bihar. The exuberant singing and dancing (sometimes erotically suggestive) in a sort of operatic structure characterize this form. The performance narrates a story usually taken from the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharatha), popular legends, historical events, or even from incidents in contemporary society. Nautanki is secular in spirit and is primarily aimed for entertainment of the spectator rather than for didactic purposes. The basic Rasa (mood) of the performance is Sringara (the erotic) and sometimes Karuna (pathos) Even if the scripts that are performed is only 150 years old or so, the narrative form is believed to have a tradition of about 1000 years at the minimum. The present form is thought to be the derivative of some other forms that were more religious and ritualistic.

The performance usually takes place, at religious festivals, secular fairs, wedding and other private occasions and during the slack periods in the agricultural season. And the performers are usually semi professionals who do other works during off-season.

The performance space may be a raised platform with the traits of a proscenium if possible, one end of a hall, or even an open space with the audience informally gathered on all the three possible sides. A painted curtain hanged at the back helps the entries and exits of characters. The drums Nakkara, Dholak, and harmonium are the main accompanying instruments. The dialogues and the exchanges between characters are mainly in songs except in the rare contemporary domestic situations where prose dialogues are used. The quality of the vibrant singing with the demonstration of voice control and endurance of the artists are astonishing. The performance will have comic interludes of skits, and slapstick that are usually improvised on stage by the actors in clownish costume and make up. These spurts of comic interludes and dance sequences in the narrative structure may suggest Brechtian alienation, but is intended to give variety and colour to the entertainment line up.

Spectators may offer special donations in between the performance itself, to an actor for his/her dance and song numbers or for an excellent show of histrionics that has impressed him. The performance will be temporarily halted and the leader of the troupe will acknowledge the gift publicly, by announcing that ‘so and so’ coming from ‘such a place’ has presented ‘this much rupees’ on appreciation of ‘this actors singing or acting’ or whatever be the case. The actor will in turn express his thanks on the spot, sometimes in an improvised song immediately, and then the performance will restart.

The performance oriented epic narrative structure gives flexibility to the form that it adapts itself to the newer demands of the era. It is said that even film tunes are interspersed in to this traditional form now, to appeal to the present audience. Now some troupes have started to use curtains, painted scenery, amplifiers, speakers, and electric lighting to further their show.

PRODUCTIONS

CHANDA BETINEE (moonlight coryphée), Hindi.

Sakshathkar, an Allahabad based theatre group organised a 51 day workshop on Nautanki from 10 July to 5 September, for 25 theatre activists selected from villages and nearby cities. They interacted and exchanged their expertise and experience with the folk artists and Gurus of Nautanki and the production of the play Chanda Betinee in Nautanki form resulted. The premiere show was on 22 September at North Central Zone Cultural Centre theatre at Allahabad. The original script by Alok Nandan is adapted to the Nautanki style by Raj Kumar Srivastav. The director of the production was Satish Chitravamsi who also was the director of the workshop. The active participation of Nautanki Gurus and musician and the use of traditional instruments like Nakara were the highlights of this 2.30-hour production.

DOOTHAGHADOTKACHAM (the message of Ghadotkacha).

This is the stage version in Malayalam of the Sanskrit play by Bhasa performed by the Centre for performing arts Kollam directed by Prasanth, based on those incidents not discussed in Mahabharatha. Bhasa (B.C.300) has used the characters and story line from the epic to trigger and point to new possibilities for the development of the story of the epic. The death of Abhimanyu, the oath of Arjuna on the killing of Jayadradha, and Ghadotkacha who arrives to the court of Duryodhana with the message of Krishna decides the growth and evolution of the play. The director has interpreted Abhimanyu as the sentiment of the present day in this production. It is the sense of detriment on the victory in hand, and also the sacrifice against love. The reasoning that inspired the director is the understanding that war is the anguish related to the collective psyche of the era.

CHOLLUM KASHCHAYUM (Verse and vision). Kavalam Narayana Panikker and Nedumudi Venu directed this visual presentation of the poems of Dr.Ayyappa Panikker, the doyen of Malayalam literature on his 70th birthday. The show presented by Sopanam Thiruvananthapuram on the evening of 19th of September at VJT hall revealed the astounding range of Ayyappa Panikker’s poetic genius that oscillates from the sublime to the comic. It was a fitting celebration of the birthday of Dr.Ayyappa Panikker, especially because it was Panikker along with the late G.Aravindan who has envisaged this novel audio-visual form of recitation cum demonstration enactment of poetry in the late 70’s in Kerala. Fifty artists including actors, poets and musicians participated, to present a dozen of Panikker poetry, with the use of stylized movement, choreography, and suggestive costumes and the accompaniment of musical instruments.

Beegam meri biswas, by theatre vision Kasarkodu, based on the Hindi novel by Bimal Mitra, adapted by P.V.K.Panayal and directed by Gopinadh Kozhikodu, and Narayana Guru, the biographical play on the life of Sree Narayana Guru, the social and religious reformer, directed by Jayasoorya for Aswathi theatre Thiruvananthapuram are the two new productions that started running in the commercial theatre circuit of Kerala.

Workshop on acting focusing on eyes and hands

A workshop focusing on Netrabhinaya and hastas (acting with eyes and hands) is progressing at Iringalakkuda, under the auspicious of Natanakairali, a centre for classical and folk theatre traditions of Kerala. Interaction between scholars, performers, and critics belonging to different nationalities, cultures, and disciples from India, Japan, Sweden, and Taiwan takes place in this workshop. This is part of a series of interdisciplinary research on all departments of acting, to rediscover the sources of indigenous performance cultures at the pan-Asian level with a holistic approach and is organised by ‘the world Theatre” funded by UNESCO.

REVIEW

UTTARA (The Wrestlers). – A film by Buddhadeb Dasgupta in Bengali

The jury at the Venice film festival awarded Indian director Buddhadeb Dasgupta, with the special director's award for his film Uttara (The Wrestlers).

The film is a lyrical, poetic and visually stunning portrayal of the devastating impact of violence on a small town in rural India. As usual Das Gupta follows the genre of the non-narrative poetic, with strong visual frames, and knots different threads to create a structure that still looks direct and straight. And as usual, he depicts the contemporary shifts in the attitudes of people in India with a nostalgic inclination for the calm pastures of the departed era. He reflects straight on the shifts and agonies of the period, but aesthetically. In Uttara, he condemns the religious fundamentalism and the growing lethargic response of society. Dasgupta says that he was provoked of last year's burning of Australian missionary Graham Staines with his two minor sons in Orissa, although the film is based on a short story with the same name by late Bengali novelist Samaresh Basu.

But this explosive contemporary thread has been treated subtly as if narrating a fable, with a universal appeal, and is set in a picturesque interior village in Bengal. A railway line, a little railstation, and the scanty lane connect this lust village and its people to the outer world. Two men -- Nemai, the signalman, and Balaram, the gateman -- endlessly pursue their favorite pastime of wrestling. The village, largely populated by tribesmen, has a Christian pastor who performs the role of a minister for his small flock of converts, apart from serving the leprosy patients of the area.

Other aspects of this serene landscape include a group of dwarfs who pass by the village every day on their way to work and a troupe of traditional masked Chau dancers.

The forces of intolerance and evil shatter this quaint world of contentment and tranquility. Cracks appear in the serene world of the village with Balaram's marriage to the beautiful Uttara, destroying his hitherto sublime relationship with Nemai. The two naive friends' healthy passion for wrestling soon turns into a real fight over the woman.

At another level, a group of Hindu extremists set out to exterminate the pastor. He is eventually burned alive in a church -- a take off on the Staines murder -- a dwarf train-guard is killed while Uttara is raped and murdered by zealots even as Balaram and Nemai callously wrestle for the woman oblivious to all else.

"The film is based on the burning of Graham Staines and his two sons," says Dasgupta. "But more than a story of intolerance and brutality it is a story of innocence and simplicity which is fractured and destroyed by a number of factors that combine together."

CONTROVERSY

The production of Saketham the famous play by late C.N.Sreekantan Nair spurred a new controversy in Kerala. The performance was by School of Drama Trissoor directed by Abhilash Pillai, a young director with broad academic credentials. He graduated in direction (BTA) from School of Drama, Trissoor, and moved to NSD New Delhi, the premiere theatre education centre in India, to do his post diploma. Then he had an advanced course from RADA.

Late C.N.Sreekantan Nair is the most important playwright in Malayalam, whose trilogy on Ramayana, (Lankalakshmi, Kanchana Seetha, and Saketham) is considered to be a contemporary classic. His plays reflect the agonies of the epic characters with unusual insight, clarity and in a language that sounds eloquent, resonating, highly compelling, and fluent in strong vocal renderings of exemplary poetic dialogue.

The controversy started when the wife of the playwright, Kanakalatha Nair, and son C.N.Unnikrishnan who has the rights regarding the works, told the press that the School of Drama has not seeked the permission to stage the play, nor even informed them.

Saketham, written in 1965, reflects the agonies of Dasaradha and his eventual death after Rama has been sent to exile to the forest. The play has been performed earlier by groups like Navarangam Kottayam, Kalavedi, and Suvarnnarekha Thiruvananthapuram, and also by Natyagraham, directed by Narendraprasad in early eighties. All the productions were distinct from each other and had the permission and blessing of the playwright.

It is C.N.Sreekantan Nair who has argued for a modern form and aesthetics for the Kerala theatre and pleaded that it should rely on the indigenous performance traditions of the land and should discard the western models. Kanchanaseetha filmed by G.Aravindan was an experimental film that deconstructed the whole play to delineate a visual structure of silence. The highly eloquent play was transformed almost to a silent movie, with poetic visual metaphors and sequences with a bare minimum of dialogue and with propensity of Indian thought and philosophy. The silences in that film were the controlled outbursts of emotions and journeys through memory that the playwright has expressed in ponderous and intense dialogue. The dialogues were experienced, even though not heard.

What provoked the son of the playwright now to such furies are the changes and the blunt experimentation in the production. First, he says, that he overlooked this as an exercise by the students. “The play performed for the first time in 6th of last march was later taken to Delhi to the National Theatre festival organised by NSD and now they are planning to take this mutilated version to Japan. We came to know these only from press reports and this is equaling in ridiculing the playwright”. Aanand, one of the most important novelists, is reported to comment to Unnikrishnan about the mutilation and ‘weak experimentation and destruction of the text’. ‘Many others who saw the production has reiterated this version’ says Unnikrishnan, who himself had not seen the production.

Vayala Vasudevan Pillai the director of the school argues that the copyright is valid only for publishing. ‘Misunderstanding provokes Unnikrishnan. We have matured under C.N. and always have the love and respect for him. The changes in the performance has only strengthened the vision of the drama further and nobody who knows the art of theatre will say this is bad’.

It is the irony that a play written by C.N.Sreekantan Nair, who was the advocate of experimentation, is now the reason of a controversy for overt experimentation and the resultant tampering of the script.

Correction Note

I regret for the error in the following lines in my column last month -  (paragraph 2) “We have very poetic and literal playwriting in Kalidasa (B.C.2500) and dramatic, production oriented plays in Bhasa (BC 3000). The very famous theatre manual Natyasastram is supposed to have been compiled by Bharatha somewhere around B.C.3000 or before”

Please read it as “We have very poetic and literal playwriting in Kalidasa (B.C.250) and dramatic, production oriented plays in Bhasa (BC 300). The very famous theatre manual Natyasastram is supposed to have been compiled by Bharatha somewhere around B.C.300 or before”

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