With his wild, curly mane and untamed beard, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Karl Marx , which is probably why Satchit Puranik was cast in Manoj Shah’s Karl Mark In Kalbadevi , a solo piece, written by Uttam Gada, about the socialist revolutionary finding himself in the hub of capitalism in downtown Mumbai.
The director was certain that such an experimental play in Gujarati would have just 11 people in the audience and probably will wind up after four shows. But the play has completed hundreds of shows in Gujarati and Hinglish.The writer, producer, director, filmmaker and editor, who works across medium in seven languages, is simply unable to get over his fascination for Marx.
“I am now afflicted by the curse of Marx,” says Satchit. “Right from the time this journey began with Kalbadevi, the more one read about this character, the more one discovered; there was a world of stories, poems, films and installations that could be born out of it. By a strange coincidence, I met this German girl, Michaela Strobe living in Mumbai, married to a friend of mine, Karan Talwar; she saw a show of Karl Marx In Kalbadevi and something resonated with her.”
The Talwars run the co-working space and theatre called Harkat in suburban Mumbai and it is with Michaela that the second Marx play is being worked on at present, for a premiere in May, when the Marx bicentennial year ends.
“ Karl Marx In Kalbadevi has been life-changing for me. It has evolved and acquired a life of its own. There is no argument over the significant contribution Marx made to the way people live now. For me, it is an endless journey. Now I am interested in Marx’s life with wife Jenny von Westphalen. We are trying to do something audacious — there is no real history, maybe 20 per cent material is through books and documents. Michaela and I are doing this piece called Jenny And Karl . Their love story is just so compelling. I wish someone could do a production on their daughter Eleanor Marx, who committed suicide. I did a ten-minute piece about her in the form of a letter he wrote to his daughter.”
It is a matter of serendipity, believes Satchit, that when he was doing theatre in Europe — Mahabharata and Family 81 with a company called Frascati in Amsterdam, he stumbled upon spaces where Marx had given speeches, found books that were banned. “It opened up interesting ideas, and I am far too much of a romantic to let go of them. So, I am actually bogged down with a trilogy. The third play is called Marx’s Coat , there is this irony in his life — he pawns his coat to buy paper and ink to write, but when he goes to the library, he is not allowed to enter without a coat. By the time he is able to redeem the coat, the ink is dry. I still don’t know if it will be a solo. I also got interested in documentary theatre with Family 81, which followed four people born on the same say in 1981 in different countries. It probably led to my documentary play Loitering , which had real stories of women from the Why Loiter movement that had women reclaiming public spaces.”
Satchit did a play Ammi Jaan at a festival of banned plays in Bengaluru last year, where he worked with Anitha Santhanam, whom he married recently. “She is an actor-director-dancer-choreographer, she has been a union analyst, has studied theatre pedagogy and is a serious theatre practitioner. We got married in a hurry before her production opens in March and mine in May,” says Satchit.
He finds Bengaluru a more exciting city for creative pursuits, because of its performance spaces and wonderful mentors. “ Ammi Jaan was a great experience. I did it in Dakhni Urdu and Kannada, with Laxmi Chandraskehar, this legend from Karnataka. I took the idea from Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s Una Madre , because they spoke about the ill-treatment of prisoners, but reworked it.
Ammi Jaan is a woman with no name, who runs a dilapidated cyber café; she is making jackfruit biryani and talking of her son’s irritable bowel syndrome, why he can’t handle spice and meat. She realises her son has been arrested because the government mapped his dream and in that they found a plate of beef. I turned the tragedy of a mother who loses her son, into a black comedy after the ridiculousness of people getting killed over beef. I want to do it in Hindi now.”
Satchit Puranik studied direction and editing at the Film and Television Institute in Pune, and has directed and edited films, but theatre is what he enjoys most. “While I was growing up in Baroda, my uncle Krupadev Yagnik used to do theatre. When groups from Mumbai came touring, I saw the legends on stage. When they needed a child actor, I used to end up delivering a couple of lines. I also moved towards visual arts and photography due to the influence of my brother who was a sculptor — he died young. So, after losing him and my father, I actually feel that the worse is over and I can be fearless.
“Then I came to Xavier’s in Mumbai, and I participated in their festival Ithaca. I Worked with Alyque Padamsee on Romeo And Juliet , then The President Is Coming . I was also an assistant director in films and that’s when Ram Gopal Varma miraculously changed my life. He put me on a very interesting journey, so I ran to FTII, but I also wanted to continue to do theatre. I was unsure of myself as an actor, but now I enjoy acting, direction and writing. I am also interested in music, Urdu poetry, I sing a bit, play the sarod — I am trying to find my voice in some way to make some sense of the times we are living in.”
