Theatre Nisha on their staging ‘Pandit Aur Pathan’ as a theatrical presentation in Chennai, on 19th and 20th Sep. The presentation, I observe will be in the form of monologues sequentially presented (or rather, fused?).
Karthik Anantharaman has written the script and is enacting the characters of Pandit Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan, the patriots who came together in their attempt to bring in funds to the Indian Independence struggle through looting HM Treasury at Kakori (in the province of Lucknow), in the 1920s. Karthik is a member of our Team CHILLU and is a fabulous actor.
I earnestly wish this initiative should be repeated in Tamil too, being a pan-Indian theme. Not only the Lucknow conspiracy but also the Chittagong armory capture of 1930s in the East and Devakottai Post Office riot of 1940s in the South would yield to such powerful narratives in Tamil, set in the same era of freedom struggle.
And, Tamil theater requires initiatives of the monologue kind too.
I have contributed in a small way to the monologue driven narrative in Tamil, through my short play ‘Ezhuththu-k-kaarar’ some time ago. When the play was premiered under the aegis of Shraddha Theaters in Nov 2013, the reception was plain damp squib as the sabha audience were not accustomed to this form of theater.. Yet, subsequent performances were appreciated and applauded. One of my young friends who donned the role of the protagonist Nandini in the play told me recently that her first reaction to the play as audience was indifference but as she went into the character to essay the role, she could capture the nuances of the layered presentation – indeed, one of the rare moments a playwright cherishes!
CHILLU thoughts ..
CHILLU commenced as a short story.
Late ‘Sujatha’ (Rangarajan), the doyen of modern writing in Tamil and my mentor, phoned up one day long ago. His telephonic conversations were remarkably brief and scintillating and this one too was so.
‘Send a SciFi in Tamil before Friday by email with the text in a TSCII font. P’haps your first e-published story’.
He was then the honorary editor of an Emagazine, Ambalam and had in the previous week’s issue of Ambalam, written a science fiction – short story. He was keen to provide the SciFi genre a prime space in the magazine and wanted creative contribution from other writers as well. The first one to be called to do so, it appears, was me. And the delivery window was quite narrow – within two days I had to email him my story.
‘Thy will be done, sir’. I hung up and started developing a theme I had been thinking about for quite some time then, biochips. After two rounds of tight editing, the script was an extended short story or novella and in that form it was published in Ambalam.
When I sat with Shraddha Theatres veterans Shivaji sir and TDS sir a couple of years ago (Sep 2013 to be precise) to discuss a new presentation under the aegis of Shraddha, I gave them two sets of narratives – a social ‘CHAAVADI” set in 1914 during Emden bombing of Madras and the second, a compendium of three short plays based on my short stories. For the second choice, temptingly titled as ‘Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow’, CHILLU formed the ‘tomorrow’ component, quite naturally, based on its futuristic mooring.
Due to paucity of time to hit the stage, we could not proceed with CHILLU for the ‘Y-S-T’ package and CHILLU was substituted with Ezhuththu-k-kaarar, a monologue driven short play.
When I met Dheepa Ramanujam, we as of on cue instantaneously started discussing CHILLU and CHAAVADI and were both enthusiastic in adopting both these works for stage as full fledged theatrical productions. Here CHILLU took precedence and was soon on the anvil (as early as July 2015).
I and Dheepa observed a humanoid appearing for a fleeting moment in Scene 2 of CHILLU has the potential of blossoming into a full fledged character and playfully cataloged what all could be accomplished with the humanoid.
And thus the script of CHILLU, the theatrical production and Adipodi the humanoid evolved.
You can meet Adipodi when the curtains go up for CHILLU on 10th September at Naradha Gana Sabha, Chennai.
And coming to the coda of this write up –
Homage to Sujatha sir, without whose encouragement and guidance in personal life.and writing, I would not have achieved anything, however big or small.
CHILLU – stage play – music scores
The musical scores are indeed fabulous. As the screen goes up, the serenading overture sets the tone for the action to unfold on the futuristic stage. The music bubbling with joie de vivre gently accompanies the narrative all along.
I would love to be treated to an encore of the climax, mainly for the awesome music – it accentuates the drama unfolding and adds an ethereal dimension to the narrative.
Cheers to Kavita Baliga, the MD for the scintillating BGM
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