You could perhaps say the plots are ordinary, but the fact that the texts open themselves to many interpretations can hardly be disputed. The rich and complex characterisation which gives a metaphorical dimension to his works makes the Bard the undisputed, most popular hero of theatre — past and present. Human predicament, questions of right and wrong, good and evil — Shakespeare opens his texts to multiple interpretations. What emerges out of his works for each director and performer is different. The Bard, therefore, continues to be studied and performed across the globe, with contemporary significance.
K.V. Akshara has had a continued engagement with Shakespeare, not just as a playwright and theatre director, but also as a translator. “Winter's Tale,” among the less popular works of Shakespeare, is Akshara's most recent work, “Shishira Vasanta”. This play, written 400 years ago, has had very contrary reactions from scholars and critics alike, throughout its journey. It will be performed in Bangalore next week.
Your engagement with Shakespeare is a continued one. Both as a translator and director. Can you explain the two processes.
As a translator, I feel that it is extremely rewarding to work on a Shakespeare text. If you succeed, you become a translator, if you fail, it still is the most rewarding experience in your life as translator. My own translations of Shakespeare have always been some kind of ‘soft adaptations' — in the sense that I do not change the characters, the locale etc., but I do not translate the lines word by word. Instead, I try to create a parallel rhetoric in Kannada, but without moving away from the original lines. Shakespeare is a writer primarily geared to theatre; and his rhetoric is in fact not just a profusion of language and imageries set in verse, but a fabric in which his entire theatricality is embedded. Therefore, capturing Shakespeare's rhetoric is the most essential requirement of a good translation, and my attempt always works towards that. Even as a director, my attempt is to bring out the theatrical richness and variety within Shakespeare's texts (the tragic, the comic, the farcical, the allegorical etc — in our terminology, the navarasas), using language and storytelling as its primary tools. In other words, for me, Shakespeare is what our Company Nataka aspired to be, and could not be. That is also the reason why, as a director, I prefer to be a simple storyteller of Shakespeare rather than his ‘interpreter' as many modern and post-modern directors tend to be.
Most Shakespeare's plays unfold a rich human drama, but also raise serious political, philosophical questions. After working on intense plays like “Measure for Measure” and “Merchant of Venice”, which also in many ways remain unresolved, didn't a play like “Winter's Tale” seem pale? How it unfolds in the imagination of the translator-director is a curious issue though.
Winter's Tale is less popular in the west because the west, especially the modern west, is not philosophically inclined to handle the theme of ‘reconciliation' as much as it can handle ‘conflict'. But the Indic sensibility is different: if you take the classic example of Shakuntala, it handles reconciliation with as much grace as it captures the magnitude of conflict. Therefore, it seems (and many have already made this point), that Shakespeare was probably attempting a different kind of dramaturgical philosophy in his late works, which includes “The Winter's Tale”. However, this was not a shift away from the politics of his earlier plays, nor was it the case of Shakespeare getting tired of leaving things open-ended. Through these plays, Shakespeare was moving into a deeper realm of politics, a deeper mode of questioning.
On the other hand, in contemporary Indian theatre today, we have reached a point where we need to develop our capabilities to address politics in radically different ways. The trite political correctness of being with the oppressed, or the more intelligent way of problematising oneself – all these are becoming easy ‘conventions', and we urgently need to develop deeper philosophical modes of questioning, and I strongly feel that plays such as “The Winter's Tale” are more helpful in that process, than plays such as “Macbeth”.
Ninasam, Heggodu, performs Shishira Vasanta on April 4, Ravindra Kalakshtetra, Bangalore, 7 p.m. Tickets, priced at Rs. 100, will be available at the venue. For booking, call 98453 82525, 98451 95824.
