Vijay Kumar - BHAWANI CHEERATH

The three plays staged at The Fifth Ajayan Memorial Theatre Event left indelible impressions on the audience.

Unpredictability, exploratory and personal are words that recurred in the mind after watching ‘Pachcha,’ ‘The Doorway’ and ‘Hum Bihar Mein Chunaav Lad Rahe Hain,’ three plays that were staged in connection with the Fifth Ajayan Memorial Theatre Event. The plays led the audience through distinctive experiences, each leaving its imprint for multiple reasons.

The contemporary always is a wellspring for ideas, but when one has a lot to say, stringing these together may prove a tough task. In a fragmented, non-linear format, the Malayalam production ‘Pachcha’ took us through the innocent and the naïve, the rough and mundane, the growth (or was it the decline?) of a transparent bonding into a manipulative one. These are just a few of the many elements that were incorporated in the play.

The flexibility and freedom that was built into the structure of the play proved to be its strength also. Kani K. and Prateesh R.P. moved with well-worn ease but retained viewers’ interest throughout the play. The transitions from playful innocents to adults bogged down with their quotidian existence were carried off well despite the air of frivolousness they brought to their performances. “The very format of the play demands a freedom be given to the performers to develop the characters. Using the space with minimal props also prevented an intrusive ambience,” says Surjith, the director.

Snapshots from traditional roles and the dynamics of the dominant-subordinate relationship emerged at many points in the play. The two-wheeler and how it can be a millstone round one’s neck becomes an allusion to the tangled web that materialist aspirations weave.

The play lost out the initial advantage when it lagged a bit, probably due to a repetition of the overall manner of presentation.

Body, voice and the space      

Jyoti Dogra’s ‘The Doorways’ was a different cup of tea. The tension she created in her space and on her person was sufficient reason to keep spectators strapped to their seats. That she recast the viewer’s conventional expectation from theatre in an intimate, tormenting and provocative manner proved a test of endurance for both the performer and the ‘spectator.’ A solo performance with an iron pipe frame as the doorway, Jyoti used her body, voice and the space in totally unorthodox ways to disturb those present.

Eerie sounds, gibberish, a stray sentence here and there, but at each step she transformed herself into a situation and not a person. Exploring the subterranean depths of the human being, bringing out the beast and the worst in man and woman, words and sentences emanated from her carried baggage. Two situations that evoke a lot of conflicting images were, “I stayed in a jar of pickles…” and “kas de.” “Pickling is a manner of preserving within a limited space. What is pickled, shrinks, tastes better with time,” she explains. The jar and the pickling process take on a metaphorical sense and the allusions it creates are one too many.

‘Kas de.’ We’ve heard it so often in crowded spaces – squeeze in, shift to make space, constrict to make way. And thus ‘The Doorways’ takes you through situations which come to us as second nature and we carry out without even a murmur!

Light design by Sujay Saple has added to the overall quality of the performance. The play supported by the Bangalore-based India Foundation for Arts is to be staged in different parts of the country.

‘Hum Bihar Mein Chunaav Lad Rahe Hain’ – the name was a total giveaway. “If you think so, think again” was probably what director-actor Vijay Kumar had in mind when he started the play. Our politicians are open to barbs of all kinds. Theatre has often drawn on political themes to communicate, that is exactly what has been done here but the satire is like a knife sliding into butter, smooth.

The play is based on Hari Shankar Parsai’s story by the same name. In an hour and fifteen minutes, the Indian election juggernaut is set rolling. Vijay Kumar becomes the neta who comes to Bihar from the neighbouring state responding to ‘call of the common man.’ In his new avatar, he also finds Lord Krishna throwing his hat into the ring. The mood is set for meeting the people – different smiles for different types of people, varied requests for political parties of varying shades.

The stagnation of the political parties, the decay in public life, hints at the power to appoint VCs in universities, sycophancy and caste-based voting patterns, he touches them all. One couldn’t miss the quandary ‘Kishen Bhagwan’ found himself in, when he went to the temple priest seeking his vote. The ready-to-please priest starts squirming when he is asked to vote for the Yadava god. Prompt comes the pujari’s reply, “Bhagwan, vote tho ham caste ke basis mein hi de sakte hain” (“God, my vote can only be done on the basis of caste.”)

Vijay Kumar has not spared even the Bhoodan leader, the late Vinoba Bhave. The parties have been exhibited in the raw – strange bedfellows, betrayers, the leaders of splitsville, arrayed before us – he makes our day. If not for real, at least by proxy, the play ‘blurts’ out what most of us would like to say.

Politicians on stage

It was not as if it was the party-bashing that gave the play its appeal. Vijay Kumar took up position on a stool and transformed himself from a political aspirant to Bhagwan Sree Krishna, Vinobha Bhave, Sitaram Kesari, Sonia Gandhi, Ram Vilas Paswan et al and all those who populate our political stage.

Even raising of the Gandhi topi was a ceremony, but the time it took to cover the length of the face was a pointer to how it gives a mark of respectability to all things deplorable in public life! He used a mix of the Maithili and Magadhi dialects in the play but that did not stand between him and the audience. The crispness in the delivery was a strong point of the play and kept the audience alive all of the 75-minutes.

The three-day theatre festival organised by the Abhinaya Theatre Research Centre has become a gateway to genuine theatre from across the country and something to look forward to every year.

This review can be accessed hehttp://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-fridayreview/plays-of-perception/article660520.ece.re.