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Entertainment
Culture, with pleasure
SURPRISES ARE what make life go around. And just when you think things must be so, they are different providing people with experiences that they never expect. Like it happened on October 19 at Taj Connemara at the instance of KLM and Northwest Airlines.
It was a gathering of frequent fliers and members of travel agencies and you would think that to entertain them, a Tamil adaptation of Moliere's Tartuffe or ``The Imposter," would be the last thing they would have arranged? But no. They got the Chennai based theatre group Magic Lantern to do this for the select gathering and what is more, it was truly enjoyed in the spirit in which it was presented to them.
This is in line with KLM/Northwest's agenda of keeping the customer satisfied in more ways than one.
Apart from making sure that flying with them is a pleasant experience, they arrange shows to create cultural awareness among the clients. And as one spokesperson for KLM puts it ``while we are active supporters of social and environmental issues, we would also like to support groups, particularly in the local forms of art and culture. Rather than follow the usual cocktail, dinner and dance routine, KLM is consciously trying to be innovative, refreshing and encourage new talent.''
So if last year they had a Carnatic percussion presentation by Vikku Vinayakram, this time they thought of bringing in a theatre group, which draws extensively from the traditional Indian performing arts — theatre, music, dance and martial arts. And in this direction, Magic Lantern was a good choice.
Apart from having talented artists to play the different characters, ``Veshakkaran," with its feel for the theatre of the Absurd, got right into the heart of the matter.
Magic lantern is a group of artists-made up of dancers, painters, sculptors, graphic experts and professional actors.
Theatre is its mainstay and over the last ten years it has produced eleven plays and performed in over 50 venues to largely appreciative audiences.
Pravin, who directed this play, is not new to Chennai theatregoers. His passion and commitment make him one of the most prolific directors of plays. Trained at the Theatre Nationale De Strasbourg, he has worked with various theatre professionals, both in India and abroad. Some of the plays he has directed for Magic Lantern are ``Camus," ``Caligula," ``Ponniyin Selvan" and Shakespeare's ``Richard III.
Pravin was giving finishing touches to a show that took its own time to begin.
Why is it that he chooses to do adaptations? ``When there are such good plays available and those that can be made to suit our ethos, why not? These are ready-made plays that deal with most aspects of life and issues we may want to talk about. That's why." And how does he go about choosing these plays? ``It depends. On what we feel and would like to take up at any given point. Most often people want me to take up the classics and `Veshakarran' is something we have taken to villages as well. The response has been tremendous, wherever it has been staged because the theme is so familiar and the comic element, so infectious.''
Obviously Praveen and his team-mates enjoy themselves enormously or they would not be involved in an activity that is not really financially rewarding. ``The response from the audience is our true reward. It is not as if it is not frustrating! But somehow we keep going by doing odd jobs like scripting, training actors for cinema and TV serials (they have an actors' studio)."
What about involving corporates in promoting theatre? ``Its tough,'' Praveen says. ``We are making efforts to get them involved, but unless they do so for the love of theatre, it will not really work."
Opening on a rather catchy note with drums beating out rhythmically, the characters in ``Veshakkaran" enter from a nicely done up central area in the big hall at the hotel.
Dressed in costumes that exaggerate the characters and their personalities, the play conveyed the timelessness of situations.
Though written many years ago, the adaptation relates to the present without disturbing the essence of the playwright's sense of humour.
Featured in the adaptation for KLM were Pasupathy who has also performed in films by well- known makers, E. Kumaravel, also a scriptwriter, Hans Kaushik, also a trained sculptor, Archana, Lawrence, Karthik Narayanan, Devika, Rajashekher, Natesh, Jayakumar and Krishna Devanandan, among others.
Giving the play its life through technical support were, Akhila Belle (costume design), set design (Hans Kaushik), lights (T. Bala), music (K.S.K.Prasad), make-up (Natesh, Hans, Pasupathy), script translation (Padmini Rajagopal), adaptaion (E. Kumaravel).
CHITRA MAHESH
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