It was while working on a play that explored a unique dimension to the Ramayana that Rammohan Holagundi, founder of the theatre group Nishumbita, envisioned the theatrical version of the Natyashastra. He states the reason to explore it as a play was to simplify the deep technicalities of the literary text, in a way that a common man could comprehend, without diluting it. Rammohan states, “I researched on whether Natyashastra had ever been explored as a play and found that this could be a starting point for something experimental.”
The work on the play went on for six months, with the team improvising the sequences and evolving a new format to capture the essence of Natyashastra. They were aided by P S R Appa Rao’s simplified version of Natyashastra which focused on the 49 human emotions and the subtext behind them. “The Natyashastra is personified as an individual here, who’s introduced through a mimetic segment. The navarasas like roudra , srungara and karuna are portrayed in a contemporary format,” Rammohan adds that he'd gone past Bharatha, Adya Rangacharya and Abhinava Gupta's version to make sure the core of the literary text isn't lost in translation.
Another novel element to Nishumbita's Natyashastra is the focus on musical instrumentation, which Rammohan says is crucial to connect the text to today's lifestyle. “I’ve taken into consideration the psyche of our audience besides the actors. I want the play to reach all spectra of crowds and yet not tamper with the story/principles. I'm aware the play will be subject to a lot of criticism as well as applause, but I'm ready for the gamble. The first version of the play came close to 210 minutes, which didn't seempractical. The final version is now 155 minutes long,” says Rammohan.
Rammohan Holagundi elaborates that the reason behind his penchant for contemporising epics and ancient literary texts is to show the world that we need to learn from our basics. “We idolise western culture, hip-hop and jazz so much. That isn't wrong, but we also need to know the range of expressions that our classical forms have.” He mentions that there's so much to be read, to know but we have outsiders preaching about the depth of our puranas; we can't ignore them. “I find many similarities of our life today to these texts and feel it's my responsibility to showcase Indian culture through the theatre form. Dramatising Natyashastra was tough also because we are the first to set a grammar to it. We're eager for the D-day,” he signs off.
(Natyashastra-the play will be staged at Ravindra Bharathi on September 1)
