Asserting rights through theatre

The launch of Gowri Ramnarayan’s anthology Dark Horse and Other Plays was marked by an evocative performance of excerpts

Despite the heavy rain, the auditorium at the Alliance Francaise was fairly occupied in readiness for the 50th Dance DIScourse curated and hosted by Ashish Khokar, editor of the Attendance Magazine .

The evening began with a short video on and a talk by dance exponents and dancer couple VP and Shanta Dhananjayan.

The event also brought together literary couple Ramnarayan, former cricketer, writer and editor of the

Sruti magazine and Gowri Ramanarayan, writer-director-playwright, for the launch of Gowri’s anthology of plays.

Titled

Dark Horse and Other Plays , the book is an anthology of six plays written by Gowri between 2004 and 2017. Each of these plays have also been directed by the playwright for JustUs Repertory and performed across India at several cities as well as at theatre festivals including at Bharatrang Mahotsav, the National School of Drama’s international theatre festival. Each play in the book has been introduced by different writers including Shanta Gokhale, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Ananda Lal, Thiruppur Krishnan and Seetha Ravi.

And the plays are set across vastly different locations and timelines — Dark Horse is set in in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda area, Water Lilies in three different cities in the US around 9/11, and Night’s End in a tiger sanctuary in Rajasthan. Some plays also revolve around history, going as far back as ancient epics with Flame of the Forest set in the Pallava-Chalukya war zone (7 CE), Mathemagician in Babylon (500 BCE) and When Things Fall Apart in the Mahabharata ‘realm’.

“Having watched Gowri’s work from close quarters over the years, I believe her worldview is shaped both by ancient wisdom and post-modern angst. It draws inspiration from the eternal truth of the epics and rages at the inherent bigotry in the best of them,”said the book’s editor Ramnarayan adding, “The plays are a heady mix of tradition and modernity with respect to the old and the wise, and the amazement and the freshness of youth.”

The book was launched by theatre artiste and singer B.Jayashri. The launch was followed by an enactment of an excerpt of Water Lillies by Bengaluru-based Cassius Leon and Chennai-based Akhila Ramnarayan as well as a performance of a scene from Night’s End by Akhila.

“As a theatre person I often wonder: The ancients saw art – kavya and natya and shilpa – as prophecy, as wisdom, as intuitive knowledge,” said Gowri. “They saw artistes as visionaries. But what is the role of theatre in the modern world? Does modern theatre bring insight? Understanding? Tolerance? Empathy?

“Every word I write in my play, every scene I direct, becomes a question mark. However, because it is inherently community-oriented, I think theatre becomes a living force with which to resist negative forces, protest against injustice, bond with fellow humans, restore lost values and reclaim our humaneness.”