Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
Where voice reigns supreme
SUGANTHY KRISHNAMACHARI
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Dialogue delivery is the key to the success of plays only heard and not seen.
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Poornam Viswanathan got it right when he once described radio plays as “the art of putting a moustache and a beard on a voice.” It’s the listener’s imagination that puts a face to the voice. The advantage of a radio play is that, without the distraction of visual images, the listener pays greater attention to the dialogue. But this can also be a disadvantage. If the ‘voices’ in the play do not measure up, are not up to scratch, the play falls flat. There are no visual props to compensate for audio lapses. A radio play, is therefore, more difficult to produce than one for the television.
“AIR has had a Vanoli Nataka Vizha going for the past 40 years,” says K. Srinivasaragavan, Station Director, AIR, Chennai. “Playwrights and artistes in Chennai have a lot of opportunities to display their talents, but this is not the case in smaller cities. The aim of our drama festival is to encourage local talent. Once the stations are ready with their plays, they send the CDs to the Chennai station for broadcast, because Chennai has better uplinking and downlinking facilities.”
The hurdles
Kamalanathan, Station Director, Coimbatore, talks about the difficulties of producing a radio play. “A half-hour play takes at least 21 hours to produce — seven hours each of rehearsal, recording and dubbing and editing. Our station’s plays have a good listener response even in Palakkad and Thrissur in Kerala,” he says.
Poornakumar, producer of Madurai station’s play, an award winning playwright himself, says, “In the early days, radio plays used to be broadcast live. I salute those pioneers. Later came analogue recording, when post production work took three days. Now digital recording has made our work easier. Big names in Tamil theatre such as S.Ve.Sekhar and Cho have all participated in the Vanoli Nataka Vizha.” Incidentally, Madurai station serialised Kalki’s “Sivagamiyin Sabatham,” over 53 weeks.
Nachiappan Tamizhvanan, programme executive, Puducherry station, explains why Sujatha’s play was chosen this year. “This year the theme allotted to us was science fiction. Our station director Kalyani Ramachandran suggested that we do a Sujatha play, as a tribute to him. I chose this play because there weren’t too many narrative passages. And wherever extra lines were needed, they were written by Kurinji Velan, a Sahitya Akademi Award winner.”
While AIR deserves appreciation for sustaining a 40-year tradition, producers must pay more attention to the choice of plays, and the actors. However, at the end of the season, every station has an audience review of all the plays — a step in the right direction.
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A round-up of plays
Off the screen: Veterans lending their voices to a script with dramatic effect.
It is familiar to find in
Tamil films, especially
of those days, to find an
Indian wearing an ugly
blonde wig and boasting
an awful accent passing
off as a British or American.
In `Anna Chiragugal,'
(Tirunelveli), we were
spared the embarrassment
of the wig, but not
the agony of having to listen
to the actors playing
Collector Welsh and his
wife, attempting hard to
sound British, and failing
miserably. There were also
howlers like an official
of the East India Company
saying, "Wow" and
"Yeah"!
"Valiyalla Valimai"
(Madurai) had a message
without being preachy.
Gopal, dejected because
of losses in his business,
decides to commit suicide.
Hari saves him, and
gets him to meet others
who have had to battle far
greater odds in life.
In "Sivappu Panithuli,"
(Coimbatore) Dhayalan
is an unscrupulous businessman,
who wants Kalpana,
an inconvenient
journalist, bumped off.
And to have it accomplished
he seeks the help
of Kalyanaraman, for a
price. Now Kalyanaraman
and Kalpana join hands to
outwit Dhayalan. While
the production of the play
was neat, Dhayalan's sudden
change of heart
seemed a bit far-fetched.
Space journey
`Aagaayam' (Puducherry)
is about the journey of
two human beings and a
robot to a human settlement
in a distant planet.
A story of this kind has
inherent difficulties, particularly
in getting the
right sound effects. The
play was technically
good, but slow-paced.
The half hour seemed to
stretch interminably.
Rather a bad choice for a
radio play.
Female foeticide was
the theme of `Ellame Orinam'
(Tiruchi), let down
by poor dialogue.
With veterans such as
M.N.Rajam and Kathadi
Ramamurthy lending
their voices, `Madhavanukku
Kalyanam,'
(Chennai) had a clear advantage.
The story is
about how Gomathi, uses
her smartness to get
Madhavan, the man she
loves, shed his laziness.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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