Unlocking epic stories

The Ramayana and The Mahabharata open the door to new multi-layered theatrical interpretations and performances

August 22, 2014 06:54 pm | Updated 06:54 pm IST - Kozhikode:

Vinay Kumar in Adishakti's "The Impressions of Bhima" Photo: Special Arrangement

Vinay Kumar in Adishakti's "The Impressions of Bhima" Photo: Special Arrangement

Brhannala may be a fringe character in The Mahabharata, a guise and anonymity Arjuna slipped into in the 13th year of the Pandavas’ life in exile. In the epic, Kichaka is among the many who desired Draupadi, remembered more for his brutal death at the bare hands of Bhima. In popular culture, the killing of the ten-headed Ravana in The Ramayana is a matter of chaotic celebration.

However, a handful of characters and sub-stories from the two popular epics that are usually swept aside are being re-interpreted in theatre. Superficial narratives do not matter here, neither the morphing into the good, bad and ugly. The creative challenge for the theatre practitioners is the gray, unexplored fragments in these characters. For them the epics are full of immense possibilities – texts that allow new readings and new performances befitting each time and age. Evolving a performance method rooted in the epic has defined Veenapani Chawla’s work for decades now. As artistic director of Pondicherry-based Adishakti, she has spearheaded multiple performances based on epic characters. Some she has directed, while the rest were done by the small group of artistes at the institution. In their repertoire are Brhannala, The Impressions of Bhima, The Tenth Head, Hanuman Ramayana, Nidrawatham and some more.

About banking on ancient texts to tell contemporary stories, Veenapani says, “Myth is a seed to knowledge that has to be unpacked over time.” For her, epic texts are endless unravelling. For Veenapani, epic texts, though, are not easy access. “It tells and re-tells stories according to the time it is unpacked.”

A theatre practitioner’s endeavour, she says, is to understand the various interpretations of the stories across many cultures and finally layer it with their own reading of it in the present times.

Mythology, what Veenapani calls inexplicable knowledge and many perspectives, becomes a natural vehicle of theatre. She says she find performances based on contemporary, “mono-thematic interpretations a little boring.” So when she works on a story from mythology, she fleshes it out with parallel stories from different cultures. “The Ramayana is interpreted in a million ways in every kind of cultural communities, cutting across linguistic and religious identities,” she says.

The mind-boggling possibilities of Ravana attracted Maya Rao to the character when she was commissioned by Adishakti to perform at the Ramayana festival. It culminated in Ravanama, which Maya has performed at venues in India and abroad. Maya confesses she prefers creating her own performance texts. But given the choice of a character from the epics, Ravana was a natural one. Her training in Kathakali helped. “My immediate inspiration was Ravanolbhavam which is an introspective piece,” says Maya. Here Ravana was not uni-dimensional but one whose ten heads pulsated with complexities. He was the all-powerful demon king yes, but so too the man with a boon, great aesthetic sense and also a gentle facet. “In Kathakali, it is purely an “aattam” piece with no lyrics and it is left to the actor to interpret each mudra,” says Maya. With that as the starting board, Maya researched Ravana, collected stories and lore, songs and ditties that spoke of him. She stumbled upon versions where Sita is Ravana’s daughter and also of the aesthetics that marked Ravana’s court. “When you read these stories, new tales emerge from it.” Maya performed Ravanama to backdrop music that included Pink Floyd. “Those ten heads encompasses all that is human, all the rasas,” says Maya.

An early association with Kathakali is what theatre director Parshant Narayanan too harks back to when quizzed about mythological characters being re-interpreted in his plays. His Chayamukhi in which popular Malayalam actor Mohanlal played Bheema and Mukesh enacted Kichaka had given different perspectives to the sub-story in The Mahabharata where Hidumbi gifts Bheema a magical mirror.

According to Prashant, mythology grew facets after he formally learnt theatre and toured the country. “I started analysing these mythological characters in the context of contemporary realities.. ..may be they were there all the while, and I started seeing them in a new light now,” says Prashant.

He too is intrigued by the immense layers an epic story offers. Prashant asserts the mythological characters in the conventional narrative hold no appeal to him. “Every attempt reveals a new angle, a new insight. Mythological subjects as such hold no appeal for me. My curiosity is triggered when I can associate a story or even a concept from mythology with an experience that I can personally associate with,” he says.

Prashant is set to premiere his latest production Makaradwajan. He takes off on yet another small story in The Ramayana about Makaradwajan, the son said to be born out of Hanuman’s sweat and a fish. “He is the child of two different species, neither of the ocean or land. My play is a modern reflection of that identity crisis,” says Prashant.

It is a similar crisis that Veenapani explored in her significant work Brhnalla. In a world fixated with polarities, Brhnalla dwelt on the excluded middle ground. Through her upcoming production Sita, Veenapani aims to reconstruct Sita through the different places she lived in – through the intellectually stimulating Janak’s palace to Ayodhya which is dominated by domestic policies. Lanka, says Veenapani, becomes Sita’s subconscious, buried with fabulous wealth to which no one has access. “I am still in the process of developing it. It looks at the nature of communities and the individuals who opt out of the State like the ashram,” says Veenapani.

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