Theatre tests Anushka Ravishankar. Her latest work “Coat Tales” to be staged in Delhi this month, directed by Australian Pauline Furlong, is no different. Anushka digs deep into the mine of Indian folk tales, picks out stories, shoves away the barricades set by language and stitches them well.
The Chennai-based author of children's books, poet and playwright, tries to tweak theatre techniques with her new work. Of course, the writer known for her penchant for “nonsense” has not abandoned it in “Coat Tales.”
“The play has bits that are nonsensical,” says Anushka in a telephone chat from Chennai.
Even when she sieved out tales she wanted to tell from the “Panchatantra”, Tamil folk tales and the nautanki tradition, she played with them, pecked at the seams and gave them new sheen and twists. “Coat Tales” seamlessly blends five folk tales and Anushka says folk stories with their inherent character posed a few challenges for the playwright. “When you learn in the Aristotelian structure of plays with exposition, climax and denouement, suddenly you realise it doesn't work with folk tales as they are basically quest tales and often do not have a conflict,” she says.
Anushka's challenge was “to get tension in them, folk tales with a dramatic turn.” The dramatist has also given more dimensions to the narrator in “Coat Tales”. Rather than have a narrator detached from action — a voice devoted merely to commentary — here the sutradhar is an inextricable part of the narrative. “He weaves himself in and out of the story. In certain stories, he is the protagonist and in others he is a character involved in the story. The frame narrative has been woven into the tales. I wanted the narrator to have a story,” says Anushka.
When director Furlong approached her for a play based on folk tales, Anushka read up from everywhere. “I read a lot from here and there.” She picked up a typical “exchange tale” from Tamil folk, a tiger story from the Panchatantra, one of Princess Nautanki from which she later learnt the tradition got its name, a rakshasa story and a “rumour tale”.
“The whole point is to make it Pan-Indian with a variety of folk tales. In my head it was a deliberate decision,” says Anushka.
Though her books are for children, her plays, about 10 of them, have been largely for an adult audience, though a few were definitely aimed at children. “Coat Tales” too is directed at spectators of all age-group. “Folk tales are for everybody,” she adds.
Music plays a key part in the play that is brought to the city in collaboration with Tadpole Repertory and Wide Aisle Productions. In her children's books Anushka consciously steers clears of messages and morals. However, writing plays lend her a different experience and purpose. “Usually when I am writing a play, I try to explore something that is bothers me. I am not trying to offer a solution, but explore the questions. For me, analysis happens in fiction and I have written couple of plays which dealt with violence and communal issues which bothered me,” she explains. She nevertheless, always refrains from giving messages through her writings. “For me what makes a play worthwhile are the characters. I have tried not to make it stereotypical.” Ask her about her fetish for “nonsense,” she cannot pin-point why the genre casts its spell on her, though the beginnings were definitely in the works of Lewis Carroll. “Something about it appealed to me. It is quite like the sense of humour,” says Anushka — nonsense either appeals to you or is beyond you. She agrees there are those who wonder about her “nonsense” books — ‘What on earth is this?'
“Coat Tales” will open at 7.30 p.m., Sept. 10 at Epicentre, Gurgaon, and at Akshara Theatre from Sept. 17-19.
