Girish Karnad's new play uses technology to juxtapose the real with the virtual

ONE-ACT, ONE-PERSON PERFORMANCE A scene from "A Heap of Broken Images"

Girish Karnad's A Heap of Broken Images is the first theatre production of Ranga Shankara (a theatre in Bangalore, built on the lines of Prithvi, Mumbai, in memory of the late Kannada actor Shankar Nag, who directed the famous Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan for DD).

This play breaks away from his usual fixation with mythology and to some extent folklore, and takes up an issue from amidst us for its theme. Karnad, who is usually fascinated with reinterpreting history (for instance, Tale Danda and Tughlaq), had broken away from this trend once earlier in his play Anju Mallige.

The issue of language

In A Heap of Broken Images (a line taken from T.S. Eliot's celebrated poem "The Waste Land"), Karnad takes up issues such as the language debate between Kannada and English. He talks about the anxiety of local language writers over writers writing in English who stand privileged in terms of huge advances and literary limelight they bask in. But the play also talks of fragmented identities and a diminishing private space, which is when you realise that the language debate is only an entry point.

This one-act, one-person performance deals with the story of Manjula Nayak (played by Arundhati Raja), an English teacher and a mediocre Kannada writer. This writer who is not part of the creamy layer of the Kannada literary circles, shoots to popularity with her English novel that goes on to become a bestseller. She is looked upon as a detractor of both language and identity.

In an interesting use of the medium of the visual image in a theatre space, her alter ego appears on screen and takes on the role of her conscience, throwing probing questions at her. This, in a way, also juxtaposes the real and the virtual. All the drama unfurls in an insulated, state-of-the-art studio environs with a plasma screen, high-rise chair and a table in place. Her own virtual image takes on the role of the confessor.

Several critics and viewers have said these are issues that have troubled Girish Karnad in his own career as a writer. This is what he said in an interview on the "politics of writing": "It's not just me, it's the whole genre of Indian writers in English who are attacked. It's the money and recognition that English brings which is a point of envy." So, if you feel that some lines in the play sound like repartees from the Jnanpith awardee, you're not entirely wrong.

If there is something entirely new about the play, it is the use of technology and not the literary technique. In a way, it even broadly hints at the crucial role technology plays in our lives. Ask Arundhati Raja, and she admits that the challenge in the play was its technique. "To act with my own recorded image, whose timing remains constant was a great task." She explains how in her vast experience as a theatre actor, Arundhati has played several roles where one's timing keeps changing with the fellow actor's. "But in this case, keeping pace with the recorded version was daunting."

A Heap of Broken Images has seen many successful shows in Bangalore, but is being taken to a stage outside for the first time. The play, which raises several issues, does not seek to offer a solution to the ongoing debate of globalisation versus culture in Karnataka. It, in fact, fuels it.

DEEPA GANESH