Hitech take on writing
At the end of Girish Karnad's play, one is still left with a vague sense of disappointment, because one feels that the play does not delve deep enough.
RANGA SHANKARA was the venue of a unique theatre event last week: the Kannada and English premiere of Girish Karnad's latest play Odakalu Bimba in Kannada and A Heap of Broken Images in English directed by the author himself. The production has many firsts to its credit. Though Karnad has directed plays in the past, this is the first time he is directing his own play. Odakalu Bimba is also the first Kannada play to go this hitech.
Big money
The play revolves round the relationship between Manjula Nayak, a little known, mediocre Kannada writer who becomes an international celebrity with the publication of her first English novel (likely to be the last too, for reasons revealed later), and her crippled, dead sister. The money she receives from her publishers abroad is enough to make her resign her job and live in comfort. Her situation brings up the usual questions and speculations about the qualitative difference between Indian writers writing in English and those writing in regional languages.
That even the greatest regional language writer does not enjoy the kind of readership or monetary returns which a mediocre Indian writer writing in English does, being a well known fact, the criticism is not unmixed with envy.
Manjula Nayak gets an opportunity to hit back at her critics when she is invited by a television channel to speak about her work. The stage is converted into a sleek studio from where she delivers her well-rehearsed, 15-minute speech, which is shot through a camera located in the auditorium and projected on to the large television screen. So the audience gets to watch her live and on television at the same time. The real drama starts after the telecast, when the electronic image, instead of fading out, takes on a life of its own and begins to interrogate her, nag her and tease her into admitting the truth about herself, her book and her feelings towards her dead sister. The story that emerges turns out to be a different one altogether.
The play, unlike most other plays of Karnad, is highly contemporary and not based on any myth or history. It is rooted in the electronic city of Bangalore and is Karnad's response to living in the city. But it has several elements one has come to identify with the playwright: the split self and the conflict between the two halves of the self, between two people who represent the mind and the body, who act as perfect foils to each other, the kind of conflict one has seen in Tugalaq, Hayavadana and Nagamandala. Even the title of the novel in question, The River has No Memories, is an extract from a song from Hayavadana and reminds one of the way Kapila and Devadatta fight over Padmini.
The difference, however, is in the technique, or technology rather, which makes it possible for the author-director, (aided by co-director, Chaithanya, who handles the electronic side of the play) to confront the protagonist with her electronic image.
As a matter of fact, the technique is an old one though the technology is new. Scores of playwrights and film makers in the past have depicted a dialogue between a character and his/her conscience or alter ego through a mirror image. But this is the first time that such a feat, of the same artiste playing her image, has been possible on stage, and that too in Kannada.
Apart from this novelty, it is the psychological drama and the element of mystery which make the play interesting. The humour seems to come through better in the Kannada version because the audience can easily identify with many of the issues raised. While Arundhati Rao makes Manjula appear a rather loud, aggressive woman who masks her tension behind a deliberate casualness, Arundhati Raja underplays the role, speaking under her breath most of the time, making her sound gentle, but cold, and urging the audience to sympathise with her plight. Playing alongside a recorded image is not an easy task, but both the artistes manage to coordinate with it pretty well.
Sets are really sleek, lighting subtle, and performance pretty good.
Vague disappointment
But one is still left with a vague sense of disappointment, because one feels that the play does not delve deep enough. This may be because one expects Karnad to come up with something more profound or it may be due to the expectations roused by the quotation from Eliot in the brochure. Since the protagonist turns out to be a shallow fraud, even her arguments about the plight of an Indian writer in English lose weight.
LAXMI CHANDRASHEKAR
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Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
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Thiruvananthapuram
