Spellbinding drama

The Other Festival where artistes straddling different cultures and disciplines took the stage was a mixed bag, says V. R. DEVIKA.

SOMETIMES IT was exhilarating, sometimes it was impossible. I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland when the caterpillar had addressed her in a sleepy voice saying, ``Who are you?'' to which Alice had replied ``I ... I hardly know Sir, just at present .. at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then..''

Most artistes who performed at the Other Festival must have thought like Alice. Even the festival organisers must be feeling the same... The Other Festival, say Anita Ratnam and Ranvar Shah is ``to celebrate diversity by encouraging artistes and performers who bring a different perspective to their work.''

The artistes who were invited straddle different cultures and disciplines and some are struggling with multiple identities and some have to make their presence felt in multi-cultural ambience of the place of their residence.

There was good fun too. The festival in fact began on that note. The slapstick comedy that brought to focus the sharp play of words that one might see in the inter-collegiate festivals at IITs was ``Curfew,'' a play by a group of young theatre artistes from Mumbai who call themselves ``Working Title''. (Crazy Mohan for the English-speaking elite of Chennai.) The Working Title had it all worked out and had good fun too. Perfect timing good lines and great acting. Versatile with two actors playing several different character and creating magic on the stage.

There was the pipal tree that sang songs and acted almost as the Sutradhar. There were the twin brothers trying to help each other get rid of the fear of the curfew and then the God of Death, Yama, who arrived with a plastic bucket for a hat and two carrots for ears and a long gourd for the mace. With all the drama that unfolded Jaimini Pathak and Rommie Jaspal bringing alive a holy baba, a multinational head who ruthlessly looks at the bottom line of the sales graph, a mother obsessed with making her son someone in life they had the audience totally engrossed.

``Love Cycle'', a solo theatre presentation by Sohrab Ardeshir of Mumbai and New York had the same effect - total. Sohrab recited the words with great effect and in a three-part monologue brought out the tragedy of a man giving advice on charming a woman on a date, a call to a woman at the end of a relationship and a drunken man in a party obsessed with women's breasts. His voice, body language and honesty came through in his work. Marvellous show indeed.

New expression

Akram Khan, Kathak dancer from the U.K., employed Kathak as a structural base while breaking into contemporary movements to create new dance expressions, as the brochure said. He presented two pieces, ``Loose in Flight'' and ``Fix''. He says ``Fix'' drew energy from Sufism's Whirling Dervishes and the search for an innovative, chemical fusion of sound, light and movement. He has been hailed as a ``New Shooting Star'' in the U.K.

While Akram began well with his ``Loose in Flight'', ``Fix'' had problems with energy and execution and did not quite know what it was. There was an inherent power and good dancing base and technique but there was a missing element in it. Akram Khan is yet to discover a personal language of movement. A personal language has to be an organic statement of the person. Akram Khan has the potential to realise that soon. He failed to convince in his improvisations in Kathak with the mridangam and the flute. Mridangam, not used to the rhythmic structure of Kathak, has to be used with a great deal of thought and a sense of loss need not be conveyed to the audience in a hastily rehearsed piece.

With Adishakti's ``Ganapathi,'' directed by Veenapani Chawla, the audience were treated to a medley of percussion with Kudiyattam's mizhavu as the central piece. Pondicherry-based Veenapani used rhythm as a narrative and told the story of the birth of Ganapathi and Marthanda. Her signature, comical spoof on Kudiyattam with its long drawn speech pattern and the deliberate use of the Malayali accent, was charming and the drumming was brilliant. The addition of saxophone was a very good idea.But in the end, it was the lack of content that allowed monotony set in.

Odissi redefined

Ramli Ibrahim from Malaysia presented his Sutra theatre with vignettes of Japanese flute playing, a monologue piece of acting and a dance that deconstructed traditional Odissi. While it was powerful dancing, the context and the painful expression on Ramli Ibrahim's face made it seem like a strain. Rathimala bestowed an earthy power to her dancing. The deconstruction placed the dance in a different context and different costuming. ``Sarasa'', or the dance mother, a monologue performed by Sabera Shaik would have had better effect if she had thrown her voice and made herself clear and if the piece had had some humour in it. There was too much melodrama there though the performance was powerful.

The best piece in the presentation was the Japanese Shakuhachi Honkyoku flute by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel and the dance by Ramli Ibrahim that imaged it. The dance by three girls called ``points of difference'' perhaps belonged to a ramp walk in a beauty pageant. Though they are all extremely well-trained dancers, the meaning of the dance did not get through to the audience. An irony is that all the presentations need to justify their work by talking about it. When statements are needed to support a work of art, it becomes laboured.

The Other Festival retains its ``otherness'' in the classical ``Madras Season'' in a meticulous way. The thought given to lighting, presentation, the inclusion of plastic arts and photography and the artistic introductions, all add to the sophistication of the festival that has now become a landmark event. There is a quality of strength to the festival that has been giving a platform to people who need to express differently.

But why not reserve space to a Chennai theatre like Koothupattarai ? Chennai has been a place that has orthodoxy in plenty but has also given birth to new movements in dance with Chandralekha, theatre with Koothupattarai and plastic art with the Cholamandal artists village. They should be showcased too in a festival that has national and international perspective.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Entertainment
Previous : Fine stroke of creativity
Next     : A timeless storm sweeps again