Adapting a renowned literary work for theatre is not something new. Artistes have been doing it all the while.
But theatre takes another dimension when the literary work is interpreted in a contemporary social context.
This is what Amal Raj and his wife Lakshmi are doing. They first adapted one of the most read stories of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer Premalekhanam (Love Letter) for the stage. That was in March 2008 and the play was staged more than 500 times.
The base story had Kesavan Nair, a Hindu, falling in love with Saramma, a Christian, and how the couple braved social ostracism. Set in the forties, Basheer in his characteristic style heavily laced with humour and deep insights into the human condition, bares open the hypocrisies of society.
The original story has the couple struggling to find a religion-neutral name for their future child. The story, written in 1943, was banned in the erstwhile Travancore kingdom, as inter-religious and inter-caste marriages were not approved then.
Amal and Lakshmi picked up the play to explain the contemporary reality where religion and caste still dominate.
“But that play more or less stuck to the original text. So we thought of creating a second part of the play – Premalekhanam, Oru Thudarnadakam (Love Letter – an epilogue) – to go deeper into social criticism. The second part has Kesavan Nair and Saramma placed in modern times,” said Mr. Raj.
Both these plays will be staged at the Town Hall here on July 5, as part of the monthly programme by ACT – A Centre for Theatre, a collective of young theatre practitioners aimed at finding a meaningful performing platform.
“When the second part was staged alone, we felt that some segments of the audience missed the context. So we started performing both the plays together, spaced by a break of just 10 minutes,” he said. Both the plays have a duration of one hour each.
Both the plays have been directed by ‘Soorya’ Krishnamoorthy, chairman of the Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi. Basheer Manacaud has written the script for the second part of the play.
