Varthamanatha Charithre, a play to be staged as part of the National School of Drama’s graduation ceremony, and an adaptation of Kashinath Singh’s short story Kaun Thagua Nagaria Loota Ho, comes at an important time.
The endless problems that plague the city due to rapid progress finds expression in this production. The story is located in the 1980s, which explores globalisation, entry of multinationals and the emergence of the corporate sector. Each of these control the state, and the story is peppered with black humour.
Directed by Prasanna Ramaswamy, a well-known, award-winning theatre personality , Varthamanatha Charithre is experimental theatre. “I have adapted the story for stage with four corporate goons as the main characters, and the rest oscillate between chorus and small characters. Those four archetypes give me the space to develop to fully-fleshed characters, rather archetypes, around whom I am constructing the consumer, the victim of the market economy culture as many stereotypes...”
Adaptation, says Prasanna, is not just a textual exercise for her. “It happens along with the process of visualisation. And more often the actorsplay a big part in locating the resonances in such an exercise. So it was here. The localisation is there as much as it is necessary for the references of immediate association. For instance , the story is narrated in Varanasi on the banks of Ganges, but it is transported to Thunga here. But the narrative and its strains are as much pan-Indian as the all pervading corporate hegemony.” She adds: “My way of work is more on evocation than presentation. In this over the top, upfront talking black humour narrative, my challenge has been to wrest it from caricaturing, but render it through evocative imagery.”
Typical to her style, Prasanna has used music and movement in this production. “ There is in built music and movement, both of which are for me not enhancement material but part of the vocabulary of a discourse. However, the intertextual area, which is my regular style of work, here is restricted to short oscillations as I don't know Kannada literature other than what I know through translation. The vachanas as well as poems of Brecht have a place in the narrative as inter texts...”
As for the challenges, Prasanna says: “The only challenge has been time. I could get the actors only for a couple hours for the first ten days. Then to get the text to translated, Sudhanva and Hoysala mostly and Dheeraj for a short while plunged into doing so. And then my adaptation of it, i.e. dividing the lines of narration and recontextualising them, both in visual and textual areas.”. Prasanna says she enjoyed the process of directing the play, adding: “I received great support by Basavalingaiah, a theatre director whose work I love”
C. Basavalingaiah, director of NSD Bangalore, adds that the play was chosen keeping many factors in mind: “We chose a play that is a culmination of what the students have learnt over the last six to seven months, and we wanted to do a production that has a modern approach.”
Varthamanatha Charithre will be staged on June 3 and 4 at 7 pm at the National School of Drama Studio Theatre, Kalagrama, Kengeri Main Road. Entry free.
