Fresh blossoms, each time

Padmavati Rao shares a few thoughts on their recent production of Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree a Kannada folktale translated into English by the late A.K. Ramanujan was brought to stage by Trinethra Theatre formed by director Ajey Preetham P with poet and dramatist Padmavati Rao. The 80-minute English play unfolded in 17 scenes, with eight children and three adults taking part. “It has been a challenge and a distinct pleasure to do the folk tale as a play,” said Padmavati Rao who has done the theatre adaptation.

Excerpts from an interview:

Tell us regarding the dialogues you have brought in for the flow?

The folk tale by A.K. Ramanujan is short and needed fleshing out. Furthermore being a play it did not afford us the advantages of a screenplay. I had done it earlier in verse for the Spastics Society of Karnataka, and had taken up the dialogue for a telefilm directed by Girish Karnad in 1991. In short it's been a rare experience to work on the same folk tale shaping it differently each time.

This time I worked on giving the dialogue a rhythm and a touch of the contemporary. The purpose was to make available to the actors an additional dimension that would enhance emotion. The dynamics between the sisters and then the in-laws gives scope to explore possibilities and their potential. As for the script, it veers clear of being didactic. The story is placed in the overlapping time frames of adolescence and nascent adulthood. A child taking charge as a grown up, finds herself completely at sea when it comes to keeping control of a situation she has chosen to shape in a certain way.

AKR's telling of the folk tale places before us the stark reality of where we are headed in the way we treat our mother, the Earth... of which the flowering tree is a symbol. It's very being hangs precariously in our hands that have the power to do things differently. Whether we will or not is a story only time will tell.

How long did you take to do this and are you happy Ajey Preetham took it up for children?

In India, folk tales were told to people of all ages. This tale holds good for all souls who breathe the air of this world. We seem to have discarded our own innate natural wisdom to the point that we do not seem to realise, we borrow the very essence of life itself from them. What we do to the Earth, to the mother, we do to our children too. Neither Nature nor womanhood can be discounted or discarded. This folk tale offers us a glimpse the bountiful nature and an insight into the need to nurture it. We shall have to learn this from our children now.

You feel close to the tale...

I feel like this tale has been with me forever... Adults need to experience this story with their children so that a dialogue can ensue for wholesome ways of living.