That Madurai is the seat of Tamil language, literature and drama is a well known fact. Not many would forget the contributions of Sankaradas Swamigal and Nawab Rajamanickam Pillai to Tamil drama. But the city has also nurtured English theatre simultaneously.
Theatre exponent and English Professor N. Elango says the theatre tradition in the Temple City dates back to British period when the rulers brought theatre companies from London to Madurai to stage plays. But the performances were only for private audience. Later the Anglo Indian community and those in the Madura Coats organised performances which were generally monologues or episodic like the trial scene in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Like the Madras Players in Chennai, The Curtain Club started by Professor J. Vasanthan in The American College gradually gained prominence and introduced the nuances of English Theatre to the Tamil audience in the mid 70s.
“Prof. Vasanthan was a great influence on a lot of people,” says Parasuram Ramamoorthy, a well known theatre personality. “When I landed in Madurai from Chennai, I was immediately attracted to his theatre. He had a natural sense of humour and comedies were his forte. Most of the plays he staged were by Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde,” he says.
Vasanthan’s penchant for sets, costumes and lights attracted audience from all corners of Madurai, especially those from the Lady Doak College and The Madura Coats Club. “He usually followed conventions of theatre and did not deviate much and was very particular about diction,” says Ramamoorthy, who focussed more on Indian writing in English. He staged Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana for the silver jubilee celebrations of the Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU). “The play later took many dimensions and on invitation I performed for the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in London. It witnessed a good turn out in Mysore,” he says.
Later, Ramamoorthy started a theatre department in MKU and brought theatre exponents like Vasanthan and M. Ramasamy as visiting faculty. “I was more into tragedies and staged an Indianised version of Macbeth . The costumes and music were purely Indian and I did not force my actors to stick to Received Pronunciation. Most of them spoke standard Indian pronunciation. That was also the time when Sri Lankan crisis was at its peak and the uniform of soldiers in the play resembled those of Tamil Eelam freedom fighters,” he recalls. His first foray into Shakespeare attracted a lot of reviews in Western media.
Subsequently he also staged Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Reflection and his Vanaprastham had a big opening in England and Germany.
The Fourth Wall Production in The American College started with its own plays such as Thalapuranam , The Bulletin and In the name of God and gradually developed into staging Shakespearean plays. Some of the notable performances so far have been The Midsummer Night’s Dream , Macbeth , As You Like It and Twelfth Night . This time round the group is all set to stage Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet .
Unlike the Curtain Club, The Fourth Wall Production involved only students of The American College for its stage performances. “It empowers students and gives them the confidence to face challenges. I selected one of the early plays of Shakespeare because the central theme of the play is more topical,” says Elango, founder and director, The Fourth Wall Production. He feels with honour killings on the rise, Romeo and Juliet is an apt choice.
The arrival of representatives from Oberlin-Shansi Universities gave the much needed impetus to English theatre in Lady Doak College. The college has staged many plays including Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the man and Pygmalion .
This time they staged Annie , the popular Broadway Musical of 70s. “After directing the Sound of Music and acting as Eliza Dolittle in Pygmalion , I love to see the audience leave with a song in their hearts. That is why I thought of putting up another musical,” says Beatrice Anne D'couto, director of the play.
“Staging a play is education by itself. One learns about group dynamics - team work and team spirit; cultivates confidence and develops an eye for detail and general discipline. The nuances of verbal and non-verbal communication in drama enhance perception, not to forget diction, pronunciation and the right intonation,” she says.
Enthused by the active English theatre then, the TVS Lakshmi Matriculation Higher Secondary School started a drama programme and staged The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . “Even today the TVS Matriculation Higher Secondary School has a drama teacher,” says Ramamoorthy.
The Mahatma group of schools encourages and engages its students in various facets of theatre and organises an annual intra-school theatre festival, involving students from classes I to XII.
While the Curtain Club motivated group of teachers and students in the American College to form The Fourth Wall Production and continue the legacy of Prof. Vasanthan, LDC’s English department has made staging of dramas a permanent feature in its cultural calendar.
