Sparks of ideas

At the Prithvi festival this year, the accent is on collaboration and interchange, says GOWRI RAMNARAYAN.

SOME years ago, I was in Chidambaram for a week, attending the Natyanjali dance festival in the temple courtyard in the evenings, after roaming all day inside the pillared halls. This gave me a wholly different feel for the art form, and the ambience into which it was born and nurtured.

This year, spending the mornings in theatre workshops at the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, watching the young participants, chatting with performers - foreign and Indian - as they relaxed in the Prithvi Cafe, made attending the evening plays a wholly new experience altogether.

This was at "Setting the Stage: 2000" the Prithvi Theatre Festival, Mumbai (November 15 - December 5). The accent is on collaboration and interchange between theatre groups local, national and foreign. The visiting companies are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and South Africa.

The Indian component? Veenapani Chawla's "Adishakti" depicts "Ganapati" as a myth of creation. Jatra thespian Chapal Bhaduri's "Ekmukhi Sitala" propitiates the dreaded Goddess to ward off the 64 varieties of pox. Mumbai's Bhadrakali Productions retains four members of its original cast to stage "Vastraharan", its play within a play, now close to its 4,000th show. Films, workshops, play readings and seminars round off the package. Before the main show, platform plays are put up on the tiny apron fringing the entrance, including one this year by children.

During the day, the young folk made the hall thunder with their games and exercises for developing voice and physical skills. The participants in the workshop on fire-swinging, juggling and stilt walking, adopted me as an ex-officio member, and the scribe found herself abandoning pen and camera to join in rehearsals, shouting with the best of them, suggesting chants and songs. (No, I did not stilt walk.)

These workshops are free (25 selected from 150 applicants). The participants have different backgrounds, Suhail Khan models, Rohit Sagar works in ad commercials and press campaigns; and Teddy More, tuft tied into a knot, ear studs and dhoti, belongs to a Hindi theatre group, acts, makes his own varieties of instruments, plays the dhole like a professional, and makes clay sculpture. There is an engineer who wants a different dimension in his life, and a dancer who wants to pick up new skills. Students of drama, Pune University, are here as volunteers.

You never know whom you will meet in foyer and yard. Dimple Kapadia strolls in casually, you see Shashi Kapoor greeting everyone affably. There are theatre people of course, from Shafaat Khan and Waman Kendre to Kittu Gidwani and Ela Arun. Rohini Hattangady is with husband Jayadev (who makes ripples of laughter around him). And what fun to see a play in Prithvi's wonderfully designed, intimate space, with excellent acoustics - always "House Full".

As you leave the premises, you find the Irish clown Barrington Powell, dancing down the lane holding hands with friends. Suddenly, he grabs you by the shoulder and drags you in. And you find yourself tripping on the light fantastic toe that you never knew you had. All the way to the main street.

However, this year, in the first half of the festival, the ambience was far more exciting than the productions.

With Murnau's famous silent film of that name and Bram Stoker's "Dracula" as sources, writer Rene Migliaccio turned the vampire legend of Europe into physical and gestural theatre in Telluride Theatre Company's (the U.S.) "Nosferatu". The sisters Ellen and Mina become victims of the bloodsucker due to their uncle's cupidity. Ellen is herself invaded by the evil, craves for blood, is wracked by lust and bestiality before she dies. Mina retains her goodness and purity, decoys the vampire Nosferatu, keeps him by her bedside till the cock crows (daylight spells death to the monster). What you get is the universal lore of good and evil, of evil as possession.

This grisly tale was unfolded with devices that were more interesting than the telling. The slides projected on the cyclorama transported us to gaunt mountainsides, red crags, Christ bleeding on the cross against the wilderness, shadowy castles and claustrophobic, cobwebby chambers. There were subtitles too, as in silent films. The score of music and ambient sounds made a chilling medley. The interpretation was stylised, making the most of movement and gesture, with mask-like make up to highlight the mannered mode.

A brilliant introduction centrestages Nosferatu, robed in sweeping black, bald head and reptilian ears, curled fingers, hands ending in deadly claws. The simple action of his stretching himself up to his full height makes you shudder. His eyes are always focussed on the neck of victims, an eerie blend of lust and blood thirst. Bunzy Bunworth portrayed this anti-Christ with skill and command. The "humans" were tepid, naive in exaggeration and caricature. The chorus of Indian actors was well rehearsed, and seemed to enjoy themselves in exhibitions of lust, both as craving and repulsion.

But "Nosferatu" dwindled into tedious repetition, diluting the horror. That is when we realised that evil cannot be actualised in unvaried, concentrated doses. To be convincing, the extraordinary had to be juxtaposed with the ordinary.

"Fish" (Big Telly Theatre Company, Ireland) exploded into another mood altogether. It was comedy laced with pathos, mixing the real and the "possibly real", which breathes life giving fantasy into mundane existence. It was physical theatre at its most energetic. The actors pranced, romped, capered, cavorted, stilt walked ... giving the audience a jolly good time.

In the process they did what most repertories find very difficult to do. Easily and spontaneously, they broke the barrier between spectator and actor, drawing every viewer into the ceremonies of wedding, circus and magic.

This happened the moment the clown (Barrington Powell) distributed soapwater and straw to the audience, scattering jests and quips. The hall was filled with winking bubbles and giggles, as the bridegroom rose in a mist and watched the scenes projected on the screen. The bride "appeared" as a head in a magic box. The clown had his box too, with a dancing doll. The best man made a hilarious speech (mixing gags with gaffs from real life), identifying members of the audience as cousin, uncle and ex-girl friend, begging them to "say a few words".

As the party progressed with multimedia effects, giant balloons were tossed back and forth between viewers and actors, the show became a game for everyone present.

Zany, scary images chased each other in a nightmare wedding in the groom's mind, and tumbled over the audience. Boxes sang, coat rails danced, the bride was sawn into four, made to vanish, the dancing doll came alive, the clown turned transvestite. A medley of songs vivified the non-narrative episodes, and moments of quiet accented the clangour.

Through it all, you were struck by the discipline, in both the rehearsed and the improvised portions. True, there was nothing much to take away, but the visuals lingered in a bizarre, entertaining muddle. However, a friend had her view. "P.C. Sorcar is better."

Common Ground Sign Dance Theatre offered two short plays, both about the aching need for human connection in the miasma of indifference which shrouds us today. "Distant Sisters" juxtaposes Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe and Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, ordained to keep on doing their show in a timeless limbo until the global village achieves peace. This company has been developing a new art form to integrate deaf and hearing cultures - a language of mime, dance, sign and visual in which the deaf performers can find their own pitch instead of merely mimicking those who can hear. (Marilyn was played by hearing impaired Denise Armstrong, while Cuban born Isolte Avila made a flamboyant and striking Kahlo).

The blue, blue music from the saxophone wound itself through the hall along with booming splashes of Kahlo's speech and song. Slides of Kahlo's paintings loomed movingly over them as Marilyn's dream image became an ironic counterpart to her other face as the naive, scared and trapped Norma Jeane Baker that she was in life. However, the depiction robbed the characters of dignity, Monroe came through not waiflike, but as mentally retarded.

In an engaging mix of insouciance and desperation, "Borders and Freeways" had three men reading, ripping and tossing newspapers, crushing them to balls, stuffing them into pockets, making little landscapes of fragments ...

With the newspaper as the choric symbol of disconnection and dissonance, the performers formed and dissolved into fluid visuals with absolute control and physical tautness. The words were few and part of the rhythm movement, as in the repeated rustle of "Your gaze drops and slithers away from me like a snake in the grass". A song intones, "Give meaning to make clear your intention".

In "Distant Sisters" Kahlo exclaims, "Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing man has; animals do not exhibit their sufferings on the stage". The Common Ground Sign Company seems to ask - when language fails, can instinct and imagination lead us towards meaning? Can sign and image help us to reconnect with fellow human beings?

The Prithvi Festival 2000 has given Indian viewers a chance to look at avant garde experimentations done in some other parts of the world. Some of it seemed naive or too abstract even for niche viewership. However, the creative use of multi media stood out, as also the exploration of physical theatre, of gesture and movement, and minimalist use of the written text. The stamina and physical exuberance of the actors pointed to training and tradition in the theatre arts. Professionalism and discipline marked every aspect of production. But it also showed that these are not enough for satisfying theatre.

A local theatre person summed up, "At such festivals, I do not look for 'realised work'. That is rare in experimental theatre, in any part of the world. But the exposure connects me to other places, however tenuously, and sparks ideas to take off in my own direction. I admire the discipline in the groups from abroad - and the guts to take risks."

* * *

The Prithvi Theatre has been consistently mounting annual national-international festivals in the last decade, and activities round-the-year. It draws a packed hall for festivals, and a sizeable audience at other times. More, it has succeeded in getting an ongoing sponsorship with Orange (Hutchison Max Telecom

Limited) for the last four years.

"The Prithvi Theatre is a major cultural institution in Mumbai, and Orange is a strong Mumbai brand," says Mr. Sanjeev Vohra, the company's Vice-Sales and Marketing president. "We support Prithvi in its year round activities, its art gallery as well, as the annual festival. We want a continuing association with them in promoting good theatre."

The notable factor is that instead of the intrusive presence of the sponsor, the brand advertising is done with taste, in tune with the requirements of aesthetic presentation.

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