Setting the Stage for a Dream Theatre
Chandradasan plans to set up a flexible performance space with state-of-the-art acoustics and seating for less than 200 spectators |
Reflections on Theatre, my experience.
Chandradasan plans to set up a flexible performance space with state-of-the-art acoustics and seating for less than 200 spectators |
Labels: Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, The taming of the Shrew
After playing an illustrious career as a theatre director, teacher and mentor, Dr. Betty Bernhard passed away on 21st of March 2015. I am still not out of the shock this news gave me. Her sister told me that she was hearing Indian Music and had the scarf that I brought from India besides her in the last moments …
She was known to me from 1996, when she came first to Kochi and directed Roosters with Living Theatre. I have been closely observing her process of play making and rehearsals, and helped her wherever she wanted. And we met again and again as she frequented India looking for Indian traditional and classical theatre as well as to meet and interact with theatre activists in India. She was instrumental in getting me to Pomona College Claremont, as my host institution for the Fulbright Fellowship as my faculty associate here, in the research I am currently engaged.
She was working as a Professor of Theatre at Pomona College, Claremont California USA, since 1984. She was an expert in Acting, Directing; Contemporary Women Playwrights; American Theatre; Devised Theatre; theatre for social change etc. Bhavai the Folk Theatre of Gujarat, and the works of Women Theatre Activists of India were also in her academic and artistic concerns. She kept linked with activist theatre and Theatre for social change, theatre of the oppressed and community theatre all around America and India. Bernhard has researched political theatre, taught as a Fulbright Fellow and made documentaries in India since 1990.
She writes, “Focusing on India, I am interested in how theatre shapes and is shaped by society, particularly the marginalized groups and people in transitional situations such as immigration. Most recently, I completed a feature documentary on ways that Women Theatre Activists of India use theatre as a means to bring about social and cultural change. Many of the older women worked in the Gandhi “Quit India” movement against the British, using theatre as their means. I directed three plays in India and two classical Indian plays at Pomona College. I have also studied with Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed: Theatre for Social Change. I have produced four documentaries and a CD-ROM on Indian folk, classic and political theatre.”
“In all her work, Betty was an outspoken champion for theatre by, about, and for women, minorities and other underrepresented groups,” writes Theatre Department chair James Taylor. “We will always remember Betty for her strength and sense of purpose, her goodwill and generosity of spirit, and her passionate love for the art form that we all share.”
She has produced more than 60 productions at Pomona College and in India, including two fully produced Sanskrit plays in English. They Include Sakuntalam, Mruchakadikam (The little Clay Cart) as well as other politically minded plays like Kindertransport, The Three penny Opera, The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and A Piece of My Heart among many others. She choose plays written by women playwrights and plays that were speaking of subjects which were barely spoken off. Her last play was “In the next room or the vibrator play” written by Sarah Ruhl which was premiered on the 06th of this March at Pomona College.
IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY
In The next Room or the Vibrator Play turns out to be the last play Betty directed. The play takes place in the 1880’s when electricity is discovered and electric bulbs were coming into existence. The other first use of electricity other than bulbs that illuminated was to develop vibrators that enabled doctors to use ‘vibrator therapies’ on their female patients to bring to orgasm as a medical treatment to treat their so-called 'hysteria' a real diagnosis, and a quite common to women in the Victorian age.
The text has other layers and themes including Victorian ignorance of female sexual desire, motherhood, breastfeeding, and jealousy. Betty used this play to speak about frustration of women whose husbands are not at all aware of their sexual needs, and to establish sex as the natural right of women.
The vibrator play is a provocative, evocative and funny about a young doctor and his wife. Dr. Givings is obsessed with the marvels of technology and what they can do for his patients. His wife, Catherine, is only a bystander in her husband's world - listening at the door from the next room as he treats his female patients. The only woman whose problem is not helped by the doctor is his own wife who longs to connect with him - but not electrically.
Both Sabrina Daldry, the patient of Dr.Givings and Catherine Givings are sexually frustrated with their husbands, who creep quietly into their beds at night and only use the missionary position, which they endure but do not enjoy. Both are excited to have their first orgasms with the vibrator machine. Mrs. Daldry is content to continue having clinical treatments with the machine and suffer lifeless, boring sex with her own husband. When Mrs. Givings’s wet nurse, Elizabeth suggests that the feelings they undergo with the machine are the same ones some women experience in bed with their husbands, they responded with stupefied silence…
Catherine Givings wants more. Catherine convinces Dr. Givings to make naked snow angels with her and discovers the woman on top sex position, allowing her at last sexual satisfaction while the play ends.
Betty did handle this play quite openly and boldly. She could convincingly portray the situations in the play with pungency and also at times with riotous humour. One of the most hilarious moments in the play was when the electric power is gone amidst of the treatment. Quite innocently the nurse asks the doctor whether she shall try the ‘manual’ way and the doctor agrees … The nurse go ahead manually and brings out the orgasm!!
The writing as well as the performance looked authentic (of course a lot of research work and original thinking has gone into this work) and more than that honest. Application of that electrified wand in the doctor’s hand resulted in shuddering moans, guttural cries and exhortations but it stroked at the real spot.
The ideas underpinning the play, about the fundamental lack of sympathy between men and women of the period, and the dubious scientific theories that sometimes reinforced women’s subjugation, are grim. “In the Next Room” illuminates how much control men had over women’s lives, bodies and thoughts, even their most intimate sensations.
The set consisted of a parlour and consulting room of Dr. Givings, divided by a wall and door; which was dismantled at the end of the play to be converted into an open landscape where snow falls down for the couple to undress and go for a coitus of real orgasm.
The costumes with the corset, the form-disfiguring gown and the petticoats was also speaking about the suppression/manipulation/characterisation/viewing of the female body by the Victorian orthodoxy. (The costumes, by David Zinn, are both lushly pretty and witty in their elaborate construction.)
HE SHE IT (the play) and OUT! LOUD ! (the documentary film)
Betty had been travelling to India many times and had deep-rooted relationship with the practice and practitioners of Indian theatre. She had a profound interest in the aesthetics and practice modes of traditional Indian theatre, both the folk and classical heritage as well as in contemporary Indian theatre. She was specially connected to the female theatre practitioners and their work, and of course to the political theatre as well.
She was also interested in the gender and trans-gender issues and performances associated with. She made an outstanding documentary film named ‘Out Loud’ about the lives of contemporary Indian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and trans-sexual young people and the representations of LGBT in sacred Indian texts. Betty says "this is a documentary that draws parallels between the present with ancient and sacred Indian stories, such as the Puranas and the Mahabharata, wherein representations of homosexuality, bi-sexuality, lesbianism, transgender and trans-sexual activity are clearly described. It shows the lives of contemporary LGBT persons in Pune, India, as they devise a play He She It. The film is comprised of interviews of the actors, clips from rehearsals and final production." The play He She It, an original play devised by the theatre company Pune is based on the true stories of the actors in the play and ancient Indian spiritual literature, such as the Puranas and the Mahabharata. The participants discuss their stories of sexual discovery, community responses to their sexuality and their struggle for self-acceptance. One individual elects castration, one becomes a sex worker, some are kidnapped and raped, and others are punished by their parents and subjected to shock treatments to “cure” homosexuality. Their stories are interspersed with clips from play rehearsals and the final production in the film. Bernhard says her aim is to show that LGBT is not an imported Western idea, but has always been present in India.
The mark Betty Left in Indian theatre in India and in California will remain in the memories of the people who were lucky to work with her, interact and share the performances. She was instrumental in connecting the West to the East, the classical to the contemporary, and aesthetics with the political. She dared to cut across the safe paths and dreamed new and dangerous projects.
For me, she was one of the motivations and reasons to pursue the Fulbright Fellowship, and her absence is leaving a vacuum. One of the dreams she shared in our last meeting was that she wanted to produce and co-direct Bhagavadajjukam with me in Los Angeles.
Labels: Betty Bernhard, Chandradasan, HE-SHE- IT!, In the next room or the vibrator play, Pomona College, Sarah Ruhl
In the history of Ten years of Meta (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards) which is undoubtedly the best recognition in Indian theatre, three Malayalam plays had bagged the best play award. Karnnabharam (2008 -Lokadharmi Theatre Kochi, INDIA, -Chandradasan); Spinal Cord (2010 - OxygenTheatre Kerala - Deepan Sivaraman ) and now Matthi (2015 - Malayala kalanilayam - Jino Joseph). Also productions of Kizhavanum Kadalum Sasidharan Naduvil), Macbeth Jyothish Mg), Moments Just Before Death (Liju Krishna), After The silence (Martin John Chalissery) has won accolades for direction, acting, scenic designing, lighting design etc.
It is great to see that KeralaTheatre is really going high.... I am proud and happy to be part of this.
Labels: Chandradasan, deepan sivaraman, jino joseph, Karnnabharam, Lokadharmi, meta
The true masters of the theater are most easily found far from the stage. And they generally have no interest in theater as a machine for replicating conventions and reproducing clichés. They search out the pulsing source, the living currents that tend to bypass performance halls and the throngs of people bent on copying some world or another. We copy instead of create worlds that are focused or even reliant on debate with an audience, on emotions that swell below the surface. And actually there is nothing that can reveal hidden passions better than the theater.
Most often I turn to prose for guidance. Day in and day out I find myself thinking about writers who nearly one hundred years ago described prophetically but also restrainedly the decline of the European gods, the twilight that plunged our civilization into a darkness that has yet to be illumined. I am thinking of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust. Today I would also count John Maxwell Coetzee among that group of prophets.
Their common sense of the inevitable end of the world—not of the planet but of the model of human relations—and of social order and upheaval, is poignantly current for us here and now. For us who live after the end of the world. Who live in the face of crimes and conflicts that daily flare in new places faster even than the ubiquitous media can keep up. These fires quickly grow boring and vanish from the press reports, never to return. And we feel helpless, horrified and hemmed in. We are no longer able to build towers, and the walls we stubbornly construct do not protect us from anything—on the contrary, they themselves demand protection and care that consumes a great part of our life energy. We no longer have the strength to try and glimpse what lies beyond the gate, behind the wall. And that’s exactly why theater should exist and where it should seek its strength. To peek inside where looking is forbidden.
“The legend seeks to explain what cannot be explained. Because it is grounded in truth, it must end in the inexplicable”—this is how Kafka described the transformation of the Prometheus legend. aI feel strongly that the same words should describe the theater. And it is that kind of theater, one which grounded in truth and which finds its end in the inexplicable that I wish for all its workers, those on the stage and those in the audience, and I wish that with all my heart.
KRZYSZTOF WARLIKOWSKI, is a Polish theatre director, creator and artistic director of Nowy Teatr (New Theatre) in Warsaw.
Krzysztof Warlikowski born in Szczecin in 1962, has established himself on the cutting edge of contemporary theater. A distinguished director with over 30 productions to his credit, including no fewer than 11 stagings of Shakespeare's plays for both Polish and foreign theatres, Warlikowski has worked with Peter Brook, Ingmar Bergman, Giorgio Strehler, and Krystian Lupa, and has directed throughout Poland, France, Italy, and Germany.
Warlikowski studied history, Romance languages and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 1983 he left Poland and spent most of the ensuing years in Paris, where he attended a seminar on Classical theatre at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and studied philosophy and French language and literature at the Sorbonne. In 1989 he returned to Poland to study at the Theatre Academy in Krakow.
He has a versatile body of work - from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, and Hamlet; to Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' The Phoenicians and The Bacchae; to Verdi's Don Carlos. He is best known for his staging of modern plays, including Franz Kafka's The Trial and Bernard-Marie Koltès' Roberto Zucco and Quai Ouest. His 2002 production of Sarah Kane's Cleansed at the Festival d'Avignon and the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques in Montreal received wide acclaim. Among his most famous productions are also The Dybbuk after S. An-ski and Hanna Krall which was presented at BAM's 2004 Next Wave Festival, and Hanoch Levin's Krum which was presented at BAM in 2007. Both of these productions premiered at TR Warszawa, the theater he collaborated with from 1999 until 2007.In 2007 he returned to the Festival d'Avignon directing Tony Kushner's Angels in America with TR Warszawa.
A separate field of Warlikowski's work involves opera including collaborations with Warsaw's Teatr Wielki (Poland's National Opera) and the Paris National Opera. He will soon direct at the New York City Opera.
He has for years been working with the same group of artists, including set designer Malgorzata Szczesniak and composer Pawel Mykietyn.
Krzysztof Warlikowski is a winner of numerous awards, including "Polityka" Weekly's Passport for 2002 "for not only his achievements of the last season, but above all for restoring belief in the artistic and ethical mission of theatre", Golden Yorick award of the Theatrum Gedanense Foundation for the best Shakespeare production (2003), Konrad Laurels and the Award of the French Theatre Critics' Union, both in 2003 for TR Warszawa's production of Sarah Kane's Cleansed, judged to be the best foreign language production to be presented in France during the 2002/03 season. He was honored by the Theatre Critics' Section of the Polish branch of the International Theatre Institute for popularizing Polish theatrical culture abroad. In 2004 he received the French title of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et de Lettres and the Diploma of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland for his distinguished service to Poland abroad. In 2006 he received the prestigious Meyerhold Award in Moscow, and in April 2008, the X Europe Prize "New Theatrical Realities" in Thessaloniki, Greece. In May 2008 New York's Village Voice gave Warlikowski its Obie Award for the direction of Krum by Hanoch Levin, presented by TR Warszawa at BAM's 25th Next Wave Festival.
Labels: krzsysztof Waliikowsky, world theatre day
Agleyum Cleopatrayum (Egle and Cleopatra) by Lokadharmi Performed by Pooja Mohanraj, written designed and directed by Chandradasan was performed in Ekaharya Festival at Tripunithura on 27th December 2014.
Agleyum Cleopatrayum (Egle & Cleopatra), is inspired from the folk myth of Egle from Lithuania and William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The experience of the two characters Cleopatra and Egle are entwined together to probe into the different manifestations of love. Both Cleopatra and Egle were victims of Love; love with different facades and connotations. The experiences of these two characters from two different cultures times and spaces are reconnoitered so as to extrapolate and explore the contemporary female experience.
The love of Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt, seems to contain a venomous strain. Cleopatra, ‘the charming serpent of Nile’ remain a mystery; she cleverly uses the unparalleled sensuality of her body to make men kneel at her whims and fancies. Here love is highly sensual with ecstasies of physicality, wild streams of fantasy and extreme romanticism.
Why Cleopatra fell in love with all those men - from Caesar to Antony - who came across her? Was Cleopatra a sexual maniac with infinite shades of lust? She identifies love as the ‘most delicious poison’, as ‘an excellent falsehood’ or a ‘riotous madness’. It seems that the love act of Cleopatra is not merely to satisfy her carnal instincts, but also is a defense mechanism to protect her country from enemies and invaders and colonizers. Cleopatra uses her unmatched talents and perspicacity in the art of love to conquer the conqueror. She calls herself as ‘Egypt’ and her desire is to be buried in the mud and waters of Egypt than taken to the royal courts of Rome; this reinforces that her act of love may be a political armor to defeat the invader. There is no escape for the invader from this enchanting queen, and her infinite scheme of seductions. But the tragedy is that in the end Cleopatra herself falls as the victim of her own prangs of passion, and emotional ecstasies. The hunt and prey merges to be one; and as always the ultimate loser is Cleopatra, the female.
On the contrary Egle the mythical character from Lithuania, who is forced to marry a snake is a simple farmer girl with all the innocence of a forest breeze. She had no choice to make, but marry Zilvinas, the serpent prince and go to his amber castle beneath the sea. She adapted herself to this alien environment and started living there happily. After few years she endeavors to visit her home to meet her folks. The condition to Zilvinas was that she shall not reveal the name of her husband; she should come to the sea and call his name to return to their abode. If he is alive ‘may the sea foam milk, if dead may the sea foam blood.’ But as she returns, he comes as a stream of blood, a sign that her promise had been broken. Brothers have got his name from the youngest child and they killed him to ‘save her from the clutches of a snake and save the family honor. Engulfed in inexplicable outpour of emotion which empowers her, she transforms herself into a deep rooted evergreen fir tree, instead of returning with her folk.
This performance do not narrate the whole story but is trying to portray the emotional experiences and ecstasies of both Cleopatra and Egle at three crucial situations each. Scenes chosen from Cleopatra’s story are the parting of Antony from her, her response to Antony’s marriage with Octavia and the final moments when she discerns about Antony’s death and her suicide. Egle scenes are the forceful acceptance of Zilvinas as her husband and travelling to the castle beneath the sea, her loneliness and desire to visit her parents and the journey back, and finally where she realizes the sad death of Zilvinas and her transforming into the fir tree.
The tormenting experience of these two characters are performed by a single actor to create a physical theatre charged with emotion. The performance and scenic design invokes a kind of ritualistic theatre; the tempo gradually increases, before reaching the peak. The actor shifts and transforms smoothly from the narrator, Cleopatra, Egle, and Zilvinas; the changes and shifts in time, space and character takes place spontaneously in a continuous harmonium as in the indigenous performance tradition of India. The intimate viewing in a sandwiched space adds to this immediacy of experience that provokes the spectator to complete the enacted poetry.
Egle grows from a simple country girl to a powerful person who can transform herself into an evergreen fir tree, while Cleopatra the all-powerful enchantress queen, falls down from the heights of a charming dreamy life and kills herself in the end using serpent’s venom. Though they live different terraces of experiences, they are knit together with the serpent motif; the living ritual practice of the serpent cult in Kerala in turn, merges the distance in time and space of fiction/ myth to the contemporary performance ethos. The performance takes place around a Sarpakalam, - the traditional/ritualistic practice of floral painting of Kerala, done with natural color powders. This Kalam drawn with motifs of stylized figures of snake gods, drawn in white, black, yellow, green and ochre give a rare vitality with shades of old-world magic, reminiscent with a primitive mystique drama of human passions and divine connotations. The knotted, twining serpents cast a spell to create an ambience of pulsating and evocative prelude to the ecstatic drama and links it to the depths of racial memory, both of the performer and the spectator. Towards the end of the performance the actress gets into a kind of trance with a swaying dance like movement, with white bunches of Arica nut buds in her hands and wipes off the Kalam. This culmination in a trance like situation lifts the whole scene/atmosphere to a voyage beyond space and time; the viewers are transported into a world of magic with the fragrance of myth, fact, and fantasy. The ambience of the design completes and compliments this ritual experience. Still, it is an actor’s theatre; love, anger, frustration, misery - all the feelings were expressed in the same purest form. Ritual itself is looked as a tool to connect the actors system and transform into a voyage to a stream of emotional flow.
The play is complemented by Salim Nair’s “Elegy for two Queens”, a composition in six movements that blends the classical Indian and western approaches to music.
Few visual artists will be painting their emotional response to the enactment while the performance is on, thus by adding to the wholesome experience. Well-known artists Asanthan and Devadas joined the premiere performance with live painting.
Painting, ritual, myth, enactment, dramatic text, music, lighting and design all supplements each other to create a multi-layered ambience/experience of viewing/performance.
Besides Pooja Mohanraj (actor), Bhanuvajanan (Set), Salim Nair (Music), Shobha Menon (art and costumes), Ajeesh Pulluvan (Sarpakalam), Madan Babu (Production in Charge), Sreekanth Cameo (Lighting), Selvaraj, Pradeep Sreenivasan, ShaijuT Hamsa (production Team) Sankar and Chandradasan (director) contributed to the show.
Labels: Chandradasan, EGLE AND CLEOPATRA, Lokadharmi, Shakespeare