‘Sagarakanyaka,' Abhinaya Theatre Research Centre's production, which had an impressive run on select theatre circuits, is going through a churn while being readied for the World Theatre Festival at Brisbane in February. A fine-tuning of the play is on at the rehearsals, since the music for this production is being reset by Robert Davidson, artistic director of the Topology Music group in Australia.
The eight-member Abhinaya team (D. Reghoothaman, Jyothish M.G., T.Parvathi, Sreenivasan, Prateesh, Jojo, Fawaz, and Shahjahan) is engaged in sorting out the changed components in the play. Adding fresh music to an already complete play is not an easy ‘cut and paste' job, least of all for the director who had designed the original production.
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“The process is not one of just adding the music. That has, in reality, altered the scene and made the whole exercise more challenging. There were areas where we had to sort out differences between our approach and the kind of music that was emerging from the Australian composer. The mutual accommodation has been done without compromising on the quality,” said Jyothish, the director of the play. He, however, is quick to assert that the actors were finding the latest version of the music a better enabler in emoting.
As the play evolves with the tweaking that happens at rehearsals, the two actors in the lead – Reghoothaman and Parvathi – are in an introspective mode regarding the development of their respective characters. “As the woman who is mentally tossed by the call of a stranger and the tempestuous sea, I find myself emoting better with the new music. Earlier, I could sense the distance between the character and my self. I feel that has ceased to exist,” says Parvathi.
Reghoothaman, however, is wearing many hats at the moment. His mornings are spent with the Footsbarn Travelling Theatre team with whom he rehearses for the ‘Indian Tempest' and in the afternoons, he dons the mantle of the stoic, unflappable man in ‘Sagarakanyaka.' The transition from a Shakespearean character to an Ibsen one is “Not a problem. But, for ‘Sagarakanyaka,' getting attuned is taking time, because the inner rhythms have been set earlier. Now it's a whole question of internalising the character, creating the imaginary world within my person,” says Reghoothaman.
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The play itself gets a totally new feel when a major element, the music, is replaced. For the actors it calls for mental and physical training to respond to the cues offered by the changed sub-text in the form of music. While the overall mood is upbeat for the production team, there is the challenge thrown up for the actors and the director to undertake a seamless journey in realising the potential of the play.