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Magazine
Emoting at Edinburgh
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The Edinburgh Festival this year will see a fair show of Indian art and culture. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN profiles a participant and theatre artiste Pritham Chakravarthy, who will deliver a solo narrative.
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Pritham Chakravarthy ... putting things in perspective
"I DIDN'T even know there was such a thing as the Edinburgh Festival until last December when Rathi Jafer of the British Council, Chennai, called me to meet its director, Brian McMaster. After lunch I did my solo piece on hijras, with some on-the-spot Englishing of the Tamil script to make it easier for them. (Hard hitting Tamil you know, not namby-pamby!) Six months later, quite out of the blue, I get this e-mail from Edinburgh inviting me to perform the piece at their festival. The real surprise came when my friends here explained the size and significance of this event," Pritham Chakravarthy laughs.
Pritham is little known beyond the coterie of hardcore theatre buffs in Tamil Nadu. With a background in Tamil theatre (aunt Kamala Kamesh is a familar figure on screens small and big; uncle Kamesh was a music director for stage productions) she appeared on stage from childhood. Early roles included a cameo in the film "Kudisai" and the lead in the play "Irandavan Pesukiren".
As a member of the left wing Students Federation of India the girl began to develop a taste for theatre that expressed her political beliefs. Badal Sircar's "Michchil" (Madras Players) fanned the flame. In the 1970s, "Pariksha", a company headed by director Gnani (N.V. Sankaran), was an active promoter of serious theatre in Tamil. The turning point came with Pariksha's production of Vijay Tendulkar's "Kamala" (1984). "My understanding of theatre then was practically nil. Besides, city-bred as I was, what did I know of tribal life? Nor did I realise how pivotal and potent were the few lines spoken by the character I was portraying. Gnani gave me the space not only to act but to widen my mind, to see performance not as social engagement but as self discovery."
When playwright Komal Swaminathan conducted a major theatre festival at Krishna Gana Sabha in 1993, with companies from all over the State as participants, Pariksha's entry, once more, was "Kamala". But how different it was for Pritham! Now she knew acting had to do with soul-searching — the character's, and her own. She stabilised this insight by playing (for two weeks) the role of the city wife in the same play, in order to grasp the other side of the issue.
Research was an area of interest fed by scripting the TV serial "Chittiram Pesuthadi", an objective analysis of Tamil cinema directed by her husband Chakravarthy. Later she was to be one of the researchers for the second edition of the British Film Institute's Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, and help organise a seminar on cinema in Chennai.
In 1993, child sexual abuse became an issue of crucial interest to Pritham. Positive action became possible when, by chance, she came across an article in a South African magazine articulating how people could come to terms with bitter memories of such nightmares in childhood. She got the author, a Boer priest from South Africa, to come to Chennai to run a two-day training programme. She also attended a seminar on sexual abuse in New Delhi conducted by the NGO Sakshi, with whom she worked along with NIMHAS to bring out How To Say No, a book on the subject. Social activism began with extending the scope of her theatre workshops in schools and colleges to address child sexuality as a major theme. Her interest in getting back to theatre after a longish break was quickened by looking at the transcripts of student interviews with village dwellers. This was part of the student exercises in the Tamil Department, Madras University. Her reading of one of those interviews in intimate space developed into "Vellaavi", a single-woman performance presented by Voicing Silence, coordinated by A. Mangai. The discussions which followed the show were often more dramatic than the performance.
A five minute TV appearance as an upper caste widow made her sense the power of the genre where the speaker sat and talked to the audience like a grandma telling her tales. When a documentary on eunuchs stimulated her to interact with those "outsiders", the result was 10 minutes of spontaneous, unpremeditated single woman narration for "Paatini", Max Mueller Bhavan, Chennai (2000). It developed into the 40 minute show that will be staged in mid-August at the main festival in Edinburgh.
Pritham wears no make up, her costume is whatever she happens to be wearing on the day of the show. No backdrop either (though artist Asma Menon is doing a painting for the Edinburgh presentation).
To the foreign press she had explained how the third sex of hijras, battling with prejudice and poverty, has to "adopt defiance to put away their pain. They have to spit on the world, and only then can they live as they want". To become "women" they undergo the tortures of castration under the most unhygienic conditions, and live in a truly classless society of their own on the fringes of a caste-ridden society.
"I use my body a lot in performance. However neither the character's body nor mine gets highlighted. People say that they don't know where the character ends and I pick up the narrative as the speaker." Here too, she finds the post-play discussions more fascinating. "You have to work hard," she muses. "Knowing a few hijras doesn't make you an authority on them. Finally, it is all about my response to every person and encounter in my life, whether it is about hunger, migration or domestic maids."
So what has Pritham Chakravarthy gained from her experience of giving a formal shape to personal response? "Two things. I know I can hold eye contact and attention while telling a story cogently. I also know that everything around us has a story waiting to be tapped — and told. All you need to do is to put it in context."
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Looking East for variety
THE Edinburgh Festival came into the Indian ken in 1966 when a small contingent of great artists including Balasaraswati and M.S. Subbulakshmi, then in their prime, was invited to introduce Indian art and culture to the predominantly Western audiences in Scotland.
With Asia more visible in Britain than ever before, it is natural for both, main and fringe festivals to strive to make the East and the West meet on stage, screen and workshop.
The easiest meeting ground is with a reminder of the Raj. The President's Bodyguard, the oldest serving unit in the Indian army, raised in 1773 by Warren Hastings in Calcutta, will perform at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2002. Kala 2002, the Edinburgh showcase of Indian performing arts has few surprises in the classical section which features Birju Maharaj (Kathak), Guru Singhajit Singh (Manipuri), Madhavi Mudgal (Odissi), Raja/Radha Reddy (Kuchipudi), Bharati Shivaji (Mohiniyattam), and Malavika Sarukkai (Bharatanatyam). Daksha Sheth brings contemporary dance while women martial arts performers display Pung/ Dhol Cholam and Thang ta from the North East.
Hariprasad Chaurasia bears the lone flag of Indian classical music. Mrigya mixes classical Indian, Blues and Jazz, while Indian Ocean churns up raga, reggae and rock.
Theatre has Sohaila Kapoor's Hinglish play "Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan" and Pritham Chakravarthy's solo narrative on hijras. A Shahrukh Khan retrospective tickles the Bollywood-prone palate.
Carnatic music is conspicuously absent. This year, the Edinburgh Festival will see a fair show of Indian art and culture.
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