Abhayarthikal (Refugees) by G. Sankara Pillai* – Production Journal II

The reading, discussions and analysis of Abhayarthikal continued and this exercise brought new ideas and insights in us. The propositions that came into limelight can be summarized as —

1. The most interesting aspect or ‘the line’ in the play is that of Janaki when she says ‘there is no much difference between the homeless refugees and the refugees with a home and family. We all are refugees irrespective that we have a home’. This statement can be the super-objective of the play. Every human has the same insecurity as the refugees; if we examine deeper and close enough, the helplessness, insecurity and uncertainty of the refugee will surface almost in everyone.


2. Thus the most important characters are to be the invisible refugees in the text, and they should be brought forth as visible metaphors in the performance. Also there should be links and threads that connect the refugees and the characters of the play. The validity of the production may depend upon the efficiency with which this connection is made.


3. There is a socio-political rationale that exemplifies the story. The ideology of the play links it with the general radicalism of the sixties where the potency and structure of the concept of a ‘strong family’ started to disintegrate. Janaki breaks the family and comes out. The encounter between Janaki and her husband in the final sequence is eloquent enough to suggest the falsity of the concept of a smooth and solid family set up. Prabhakaran, the other character wanted to marry a girl and initiate a family life which did not take place and his mental balance is spoiled. The old man spent the whole life to bring up his son and tried his best to create an upright family, but he turned into a stray soul on the death of his son. Thus the dream to establish a family and attempts to live in tune with the establishment is disturbed resulting in expatriate identities and that makes the ‘story’ of the play. The play hints on the breaking up and disintegration of the social structure based on solid families.


4. There are obvious economic reasons for this social transition. The porter married his daughter to a better alliance due to financial reasons. Appu, the son of the old man has to join the army is eventually killed, is also out of economic compulsions and poverty. The peddler and the leader are also the outcome of the same economic and deplorable social condition. The reason for the refugees to migrate to an alien land may also be the poverty and lack of survival prospective in their birthplace.


5. There is also a mystical and philosophical component in being a refugee. A refugee is almost a gypsy, a group of people sharing the space, sufferings and possibilities; but not bonded to each other strongly. They may or may not be related as in a conventional family, may be blood- relatives or may be unfamiliar and has come together on the demand of time and state of affairs -- a group of people abandoned and living together with its own laws of ethics and customs. They live in temporary arrangements and are always in a threshold to move and that gives immense freedom to make life lighter for them.


6. We could observe the same slackening of bonds in present day families too, where migration is the order of the new global situation. It is normal that children migrate to other countries and places far away in marriage, job, business etc and the notion of a single family with grandparents, husband, wife and children living together as a unit is already broken; what remains is the skeleton structure of the edifice. Thus contemporary life has made all of us into refugees irrespective of the status and other amenities, and this play is speaking exactly the same bizarre fact. The revealing of this unpleasant reality may be emotionally shocking and at the same time a purgative action. Thus the play reflects the contemporary society and the possible audience.


7. This argument is reinforced by the parallels between Nora in Ibsen’s Dolls house and Janaki. Towards the end in both the plays, the wife talks directly into the face of the husband for the first time in her life, and then dare to break out of the marital bondage to ascertain their freedom. In both the plays the husbands are shocked and plead their wives to return to the warmth and safety of the home, which the woman denies and walks out.


8. There is an influence of Ibsen in the narrative structure of the writing also. It is the mode of reflective introspection between the characters that reveal the past story. The play opens somewhere near the climax, and the reader comes to know about the past incidents slowly from references and hints in the dialogues as the play progresses.


9. The characters in the play are depicted as typical caricatures. But to communicate the depth of the situation and its gravity, the actor has to carry the characters beyond caricaturing and that is going to be the challenge for the actor.


10. The setting and atmosphere is more important than the characters in communicating the feel and meaning of the play. The rural railway station, the cement benches, the tree with flowers, the ground with a spread of fallen flowers, the lamp post, the darkness surrounding, the moonlight filtering, possibility of a fence of cactus etc enhance the significance to the whole enactment.


11. The play should break away from the proscenium structure. One option is that the group of refugees can occupy the main acting area and the characters can be amidst the audience and can act from there. An open area under a tree with minimum or no walls in the set (that are on the tumble) may be the best space for the enactment). Breaking of the walls is the working idea behind this performance.


12. The place is almost dark except the moonlight. The characters have the tendency to merge into the darkness than the pool of light.
    The discussion and analysis was productive with the students/participants coming with valid observations and comments. Hope these may influence and reflect in the production. We will do the breaking up of the text into units and then endeavor the discussion further, along with improvisation which is another mode to discuss, relate and reinvent. Also we have to invent exercises that can prepare the acting pattern for this play.
    
    
    *G. Sankara Pillai is the author many plays that include Bharathavakyam, Amalanmar, Karutha Daivathe Thedi, Poojamuri, Bheema Ghatolgacham Bommayattom, Snehadoothan, Nidhiyum Neethiyum, Bendi, Anayum Kurudanmarum, Rekshapurushan, Moodhevi Theyyam, Thirumpi Vanthan Thampi, Avatharanam Bhranthalayam, Thavalam, Sabarmathi Dooreyanu, Oru Kootam Urumbukal, Kasmiyude Cherippu, Subhantham, Aasthana Viddikal, Kizhavanum Kazhuthayum, Deepam Deepam, Moonnu Pandithanmaarum Parethanaya Simhavum, Kazhukanmar etc…
    

Salute Vijay Tendulkar, the Iconoclastic Playwright who Modernized Indian theatre.

One more master playwright passes away….
Salutations to Vijay Tendulkar (06 January, 1928– 19 May, 2008)
The author of Gidhade (The Vultures) (1961), Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (Silence! The Court is in Session) (1967), Ghasiram Kotwal (1972), Sakharam Binder (1972), Kamala (1981), Kanyadaan (1963), and many more plays including plays for children like Bāle Miltāt, (1960) and Pātlāchyā Poriche Lagin (Marriage of a Village Mayor's Daughter) (1965), etc…
He wrote about the wretched lives of the lower middle class and was part of the new awakening in the theatre of 1960’s along with Mohan Rakesh, Girish Karnad, and Badal Sircar; and gave a new idiom in the style, language and substance of contemporary Indian theatre.
Tendulkar was part of the Quit India movement and India’s freedom struggle, but cannot negotiate with the optimism of the Nehruvian age; he wrote stark plays about middle class agony, ambitions, fake morality, anarchy and paradoxes within …
His plays were sagas of conflicts between individuals and society in general, which took his characters through endless and complex emotional states which had no reverence to the so called morality and value system of the society…
He was exploring the themes of violence in its various forms: domestic, sexual, communal, and political.
Kamala is an indictment of the success-oriented male society in which women are the springboard for the accomplishments of men.
Silence! The Court is in Session combines social criticism with the tragedy of an individual (that to a female actor) victimized by society pf her colleagues in theatre.

Sakharam Binder is about the domination of the male gender over the female. The main character, professes not to believe in "outdated" social codes and conventional marriage. He regularly gives ‘shelter’ to abandoned wives, and uses them for his sexual delights without considering the emotional and moral implications of his victims. Paradoxically, some of the women also falls into his arguments and simultaneously want to be liberated from their enslavement.
Ghashiram Kotwal dealt with political violence which unveils the decadent Peshwa kingdom and its political machinations, and analyses how the pursuit of power results in moral decay. This play recounts the power game played out in terms of caste ascendancy in politics. The structure of narration is different from other Tendulkar plays which are mostly written the realistic mode and under obvious influence from the western drama. Ghashiram is written as a musical drama, and the performance of it directed by Jabbar Patel, for Theatre Academy Pune combined traditional Marathi folk forms with contemporary theater techniques to create a new paradigm of expression, turned out to be one of the milestones that decided the direction of the later Indian theatre. Ghashiram Kotwal' was staged over 6,000 times in its original and adapted versions, making it one of the longest running plays in Indian theatre history
Vijay Tendulkar wrote his best plays in the 60’s and 70’s when the Marathi theatre was on the uphill road, shaking of the melodrama and the tear busters to create something more genuine and meaningful in theatre. This was also the period when Marathi theatre was perfecting its craft of acting and technique to give high aesthetic standards in theatre. His plays were produced many enthused directors and actors including Sriram Lagoo, Vijaya Mehta, Damu Kenkre, Arvind Deshpande, Bhakti Barwe, Satich Alekar, Satyadeo Dube, Mohan Agashe, Sulabha Deshpande, Naseeruddin Shah, Amol Palekar, Om Puri, and Smita Patil, among others..
Tendulkar wrote his plays mostly based on real experiences. He says in an interview. “I personally don’t bother about people who haven’t seen life. They close their eyes at the sight of suffering as if it doesn’t exist. The fact is that life is dark and cruel; it’s just that you don’t care for the truth. You don’t want to see it because it might make you uncomfortable. If escapism is your way of living then you will fail to see the truth. I have not written about hypothetical pain or created an imaginary world of sorrow. I am from a middle class family and I have seen the brutal ways of life by keeping my eyes open. My work has come from within me, as an outcome of my observation of the world in which I live. If they want to entertain and make merry, fine go ahead, but I can’t do it, I have to speak the truth.”
He was so active and responding about social and political situations and concerned with environmental problems and the like but did not want to make a sound out of it and just to attract the media. He did not make a noise where he was not intended to. He told his immediate friends that he wanted his death is to be mourned and made a big function.
"I don't want my death to be mourned," Vijay Tendulkar told his friend Ashok Kulkarni a few days ago from his hospital bed.
"He said he wished a quiet passage," Kulkarni recalled his conversation with an ailing Tendulkar in a Pune hospital. "He didn't want the last rites to be performed. And he said 'No' to condolence meetings." "My innings is over," Tendulkar told Kulkarni and his friends. He didn't even want the Press to know about his death. "He insisted that we inform the Press about his death only after the funeral," Kulkarni said. He made sure his last days were normal.
Salutations to the maestro playwright, for the dark and realistic expression about the unpleasant truths and brutality of the middleclass, the snobbery, inherent violence and manipulation of power, that runs through various strata of the social structure.

ABHAYARTHIKAL (Refugees)- I

G. Sankara Pillai was one of the most versatile and towering personalities of Indian literature and theatre scene. Belonging to a generation of eminent Malayalam writers he ascended great heights and imbibed the cultures of other regions. A pathfinder and leader of great stature, he was committed to creating bridges between the theatre of the Earth and contemporary sensibility through his writings, theatre direction and teaching. He initiated a new movement in Kerala.
Abhayarthikal (Refugees) is a play written by him 1965, much before the new theatre movement started in Kerala. We are planning to stage this play with the students of Lokadharmi as part of the theatre training. I thought that it will be nice to keep a sort of account about the process of the production. I hope you can expect a series of postings about this process.

I. The Initial Discussion after the first Reading.
The play is set in a village railway station. There is the presence of some north Indian refugees settled nearby and their presence reaches the stage through mostly sounds and songs. The time is night.
The major characters
1. Janaki, a lady in her 30s, the wife of Raghavan and is from a good family. Raghavan had wed a new girl on the insistence of Janaki since she is not able to give birth to a child. She says she is waiting in the darkness of the station waiting for the train.
2. Prabhakaran, a young man who is searching for her ladylove, he feels that she is somewhere near and runs around for her. This man was in lobe with the daughter of the Porter with his silent blessing. But when a better proposal came porter married her daughter off and Prabhakaran lost the balance of his mind.
3. The Old Man who come to the railway station expecting his son who is employed in the army returning. Actually the boy is dead and the old man does not know this. He is waiting and waiting….
These three characters are the sort of refugees as Janaki says; someone can be a refugee even if he had a home or family.
The play knits these three stories into a single entity. These stories are different but are connected to one another through the feel of helplessness and the silent expectation of a train that may change the course of events.
There are other characters also who waits for the train that includes,
1. The bridegroom, soon after his marriage, who has to travel with his wife and party in the train to a new life, and he too needs the train to come.
2. The Leader waits for the train with flowers so that he can garland his leader who travels by that train. It is his duty to pay respect and regard when his leader and mentor pass through his village.
3. Arishtam Kittan, the illicit liquor peddler, with country liquor filled in a cycle tube and is take little rest at one of the station benches.
It seems that equally important is the refugees who actually do not appear on stage and the inner relationship with the characters on stage, is intended in the play.
The three plots interwoven can give rise to three different plays with a lot of melodrama and sentiments filled in. the characters are the usual and expected ones in a play written in 1960.s in Malayalam. We may encounter the same characters and similar situations in many plays. But the play depicts the social situation and concerns of the Kerala society of that period. We can observe the elements of a modernist perspective in the whole arrangement and structure of the play even if it looks so realistic in nature and the characters are at times caricatures.

Theyyatheyyam—a play about performances

This play is significant in the oeuvre of Kavalam since, it has a very intriguing narrative and a storyline with many levels of meanings and different layers of connotations.
It narrates the story of Ramayana, the epic. It uses not the Valmiki Ramayana the most widely accepted form, but is narrating a very regional version of Ramayana, where Rama is named Daivathar, Seetha is Poonkanni, and Hanuman is Bappooran while Ravana is named Paranki chamundi. This local and folk version of Ramayana deviates from the grand text in many ways. This is more fluid, straightforward, and is the illustration of the indigenous creativity of the masses. (Here Ravana is devitalized by hanuman by removing his Urukku – a magical waste band- while Ravana dozes during his Tapasu. It reflects the immediate social concerns and milieu of the folk and their life. Accepting and acknowledging such local versions in the present context where there is a conscious attempt to establish a monolithic Ramayana, is a significant position.
This play suggests strong comments about colonialism and the history of protest against the colonizer. The Paranki is clearly the foreign invader who is to loot the resources of the land and molest Poonkanni, the local girl. The colonizer manipulates and wins over the protests spurting against him. This play has a strong comment on the power politics of colonialism and the cultural implications of it.
This play also speaks about the villainy of the local feudal landlord and his handling of the working class. Mekkanthala the local landlord has an eye over Poonkanni and tries to molest her. His brut less and cunning passion for the working class girl is clear and overt. When she do not yield to his whims and fancies, the landlord declares that none of the laborers will be given work in his field; the right to reap the harvest was denied by this landlord which follows a suggestion of possible protest and confluence of the working class. The sickle that is to reap the paddy is transformed into a weapon to eliminate the feudal landlord and becomes the symbol of the working class upsurge. Ravunni after killing the landlord has to go in hiding since police and power-centers hunts for him. Such a clear parable on the peasant revolt suggested in the play is strongly translated into the visual imagery in the whole narrative.


Varied layers of different plots are interwoven to get a seemingly simple text. Besides this the narrative structure and its composition is also important. The play becomes an essay on the performer and the performance itself. It is trying to understand the inner dynamics and chore of the performance.
Performance of myths, performance of the daily routines of the common man who is helpless and wrapped in the daily cores, and also on the performance of this particular play itself becomes the concern of the narrative. It is interesting that the performer is to perform different roles inside the performance itself. He has to narrate the story, explain and interpret it, and at the same time is the character of the play. Performance itself turns out to be the theme. While performing the Paranki Chamundi, Ramunni has to be the representative of the social attribute of the working peasant, and has to lead a protest against the feudal landlord. At the same time he has to elope with Poonkanni also return as the performer of the Theyyam. His mundane existence and his character merge into one. His social responsibility to rebel the landlord and his responsibility perform the Theyyam are having the same importance and consequence. Added together is the social human he depicts.
The singer-narrator has another significant veracity. He has to narrate, create the characters, invite and evoke them on to the stage, interpret and explain the different junctures of the plot, but also is a victim of the events on stage. At times he has to run away from the scene since the very characters he invoked beset him. He is to shift between the performer and the character and at times caught in between the two states. The position and space of him as an actor in the physical as well as the performance realm is always in transformation and is the continuation of one to the other. He is bound within the physical space of the fiction and its dynamics, under the coercion of the other characters, and has to emote, feel and suffer according to the demands of the situation. He is under the endorsement of the director, other actors, and the plot itself. The physical spacing of the actor in the performance context and his functions in an oriental performance is essayed in this creation and its enactment.
This note is the response of seeing the performance of Theyyatheyyam, a play written and directed by Kavalam Narayana Panikker and performed by Sopanam at Fine arts Hall Ernakulam and also the personal chat with Kavalam before the play.

Evolution of Kavalam Theatre in the Indian Context

One of the most important functions in Niravu –Fulfillment, the program organized as a tribute to Kavalam Mahayana Panikkar on his 80th birthday was a seminar on the evolution of Kavalam Theatre in the Indian Context. The program was held in Kanakakunnu palace Thiruvanathapuram from 18th to 20th April, 2008.

Well known Sanskrit scholar and theatre expert Dr. K.D. Thripadhi set the seminar in the in the right focus in his presidential remark by soliciting Kavalam theatre with a historic perspective. He suggested that the proscenium theatre and its era in the Indian arena were over by the sixties. Habib Tanveer has already come back leaving his London experiences behind, to the Chathisgadi villages to reinvent the Indian theatre. The Sanskrit theatre tradition of Koodiyattam was being revived and set resolute in Kerala. The 4th volume of Natyasastra – The Indian treatise on theatre, was published from Baroda in 1964. All these coincide and mutually fulfill the search for an Indian identity in Theatre.

The question in the air was how to make the age old theatre traditions contemporary. Theatre is not an archival form, but it is to be contemporary, vibrant and living. Kavalam had a specific role in bring out this resolution.

The visit of Kavalam to Ujjain in 1978 with his Sanskrit adaptation of Sakuntalam is an important event in his career. and the focus of Indian theatre of the seventies was on the Sanskrit tradition of performance.

Tripadi argued that the position of Kavalam is at par with the masters of world theatre along with Eugene Barba, Richard Schechner, Peter brook, along with Rattan Tiyyam from the Indian continent. All these masters were trying to conjure the oriental theatre tradition to expound a modern theatre form and performance language, that can address the sensibilities of the new era.

Kavalam dissolved his own idiom of expression even if it is derived from classical forms with the Sanskrit tradition of performance and at the same time used it to interpret Sanskrit plays with a modern perspective. Tripadhi was focusing on the interpretations of Kavalam in his adaptations of Bhasa, Kalidasa, and other Sanskrit playwrights.

In the works of Kavalam, a complimenting harmony of the folk and classical traditions of the land can be observed. The tradition is not an end in itself but is the process of continuity, and this makes Kavalam a contemporary theater director. He is using the mythology in order to discover new meanings valid for the current day.

B.R. Bhargava observed in his paper that ‘theatre’ is to be liberated from the written text and Kavalam is one director who did it in his productions. Confirming to the tradition of eastern theatre Kavalam did not pass the agonies and miseries from the stage to the audience as in western theatre. Kavalam theatre refines the spectator and provides the Ananda out of the Rasanaubhava.

Udayan Vajpeyi observed the flow of the narrative and the eclectic amplitude of scales – vocal and physical – in Kavalam productions. His Vachika or the vocal patterns range from prose to songs, mundane speech to refined Alapa of music. In movement it encompasses the simple walk to the dance. This whole range of microtones of Sruthi to the dance choreography makes his plays a Leela in its true meaning. With this Leela Kavalam contemporizes, recreates the old Desi laws into a new Margi way. With choreography Kavalam creates the whole macrocosm of universe from earth to sky to water in a unique structure; a pagan mode to express a pagan vision.

In all these papers the adaptations of Kavalam as a director of the Sanskrit plays were in focus. So I felt that it is appropriate to speak about his original writing in Malayalam as my response. I started my talk by saying that the contribution of Kavalam to Indian theatre is total and comprehensive. He was a writer and director merged into one who knew the essence of the language of theatre and its creative milieu. As a writer he demanded that his works has to be reinterpreted in performance and not to be staged as such. He insisted that the creativity of theatre is in reinterpreting the text by a director and a host of actors. I remembered the discussion between me and Kavalam when I was to direct Poranadi (outcast) written by him for Lokadharmi. He asked me specifically not to follow each and every line written by him as something sacred. He asked me to change it and make it my own. This insight is so important in the context, where many of the playwrights insist that each of the word and even punctuations they created are holly and should not be changed. He expected me to take the freedom he himself takes with the texts of Bhasa while he adapts them. And Bhasa has also taken the same creative freedom to interpret the Mahabharata in his plays.

Another important assertion he made in Indian theatre is to validate the regional language theatre and culture and reinforce it. Even now the Indian theatre is imagined as the works in Hindi produced from the metros of Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkota. India outside these cities was not a concern of the cultural intelligentsia. It was the result of the works of BV Karanth, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar and Ratan Thiyyam that the regional language theatre is accepted or considered equal with the mainland theatre. The recognition and acceptance we experience in Delhi or other north Indian cities for our plays in Malayalam, is the result of the works of Kavalam and his persistence to validate the language theatre, physically culturally and aesthetically. Through his works he established the language, its cultural implications, and aesthetics as a distinct entity. Thus in redefining Indian theatre from the mainland and metro sensibilities, to a pan-Indian conglomeration of regional entities is a true contribution of Kavalam and his colleagues.

Kavalam was also one playwright who wrote his texts in an Indian narrative mode. His plays are texts to be performed, knitted in a loose narrative that suits performance. It is so flexible so that, an actor and a director get enough space to interpret it according to their sensibilities and viewpoints. His plays have passages and pathways to enter, roam around and to exit for a creative person. The journey into the text, through it and out of it and re-entering into a Kavalam text is a highly enriching and creative experience for a director. This is possible since the narrative structure of his writing is truly Indian and not influenced by the western models of proscenium drama. It gives creative freedom to invent the form and interpret the content. He writes in a real ethnic Malayalam using the rural flavor of the spoken language. It can communicate meanings so sharp and subtle. The sonority and vocal patterns are set to Kerala meter patterns. He may be writing in prose and in verse or in poetry. But the prose has the inner rhythm inside it so that it can be sung by an actor. Also the verse and poetry can be said as prose dialogues without changing the written text. The vocalization of his language is so suited to meet the needs of the creative actor and director and to suit the interpretation of the scene. This flexibility which allows shifts between prose, poetry and verse is because his writing is closer to the aural tradition than the literary tradition of ‘writing’ the literature.

It is interesting to note the subtlety with which he denotes the political meanings into his plays. Most of his plays are derived from local myths or legends from a specific locale in Kerala. He writes a play based on this native myth belief or hearsay, to express universally valid ironies of contemporary existence. In most of his plays, the existing social structure is at the verge of collapse and there is the throb of the evolution of a new system. This kind of a socio-political situation when one system is collapsing and another is to evolve is a very interesting political, cultural and sociological scenario with a lot of intrinsic drama. Panikkar always depicts this agonies and uncertainties of a political transformative period. It is worthy of note that almost all of the rulers/kings in his plays are weak characters, not capable of doing anything or to control the given situation. They are insignificant presences and Panikker leaves their cataclysm with a sarcastic smile. They are almost clowns or pawns at the threshold of a changing history and the density of the situation. Thus his plays are having a political underscore with a cultural and historic perspective, and this aspect of his plays are not much discussed till day.

Panikkar is also a good translator of plays. His translations of Bhasa texts into Malayalam are truly a great contribution. In translating Bhasa plays he keeps the prerogatives and concerns of Bhasa in tact, smoothly into Malayalam so suited to perform.

Kavalam has also played a very valid role in formulating a theatre training system with an Indian perspective. When our theatre schools including NSD are still thriving to free it from the clutches of the western training methodologies and are incapable of identifying an Indian system of actor training, Kavalam has quite successfully arrived at a system of training the Indian artists and is practicing it.
Thus the contribution of Kavalam to Indian theater is spread on all aspects of theatre-directing, writing, theorizing, training and performing.

Kavalam theatre becomes the reference point for the present day theatre practice in this part of the country. One can work along, further or deviate from his creative contribution. The evolving Indian theatre has to salute this maestro and guru with all respect and reticence.

Other respondents in the seminar were Puthusseri Ramachandran, T.M. Abraham, Venuji, V.Jayarajan and Sangita Gundecha with .P. Narayana Kurup as the moderator.
On the whole the seminar was trying to place Kavalam Narayana Panikkar and his contribution through the evolution of Indian theatre to its new edifice.