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Blurring lines

Abhinaya Taranga’s production of K.V. Akshara’s Swayamvaraloka tackles eternal conflicts without flogging a dead horse

Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

COMMITTED ATTEMPT The actors were very convincing and played their roles to near perfection

At the outset, K.V. Akshara’s “Swayamvaraloka” is a story of the encounter between tradition and modernity. But it isn’t just one more in the list: it tells the tale in all its complexities, not merely mindless friction and ir rational resistance between generations and mindsets.

“Swayamvaraloka”, essentially a play of ideas, touches upon many issues and raises several questions. But the invisible voice of the playwright, who is also the navigator doesn’t, even for a moment, lull one into the belief that there are easy solutions or that they have lone, unambiguous answers. In fact, most often in the play, he throws together seemingly binary opposites, even as he deliberates if they are in fact opposites. For instance, he asks, ‘What is faith?’, ‘Isn’t faith fallacy too?’, ‘Are desire and denial two mutually exclusive concepts?’ and ‘Is the sacred ash potent enough? Enough to undermine human efforts?’ Akshara infuses these profound questions with force by getting the smaller, insignificant characters, who neither control the play nor play a momentous role in the larger scheme of things, to mouth them. A skilled craftsman and a theatre person himself, he weaves story within story, as if to say that there are answers only in the world of imagination what with the collapse of ideological super structures. That’s probably why the Russian of the near-fictional realm reminds the protagonist Ramakrishna Joyisa of the socialist movement from his past.

In a way, speaking of Akshara’s play is speaking of Abhinaya Taranga’s production of “Swayamvaraloka”, which was staged at H.N. Kalakshetra. It is evident that Prakash Belawadi, the director of the play, is in total admiration of the script. This at once becomes the writer’s as well as the director’s obligation to the crises of our times. It also explains the unedited, three-hour duration, so unusual for our times.

The sets were strikingly unusual. The play chose to get off the actual stage and occupy the centre of the auditorium. Minimalist it was, but effective. The two portions to it, which faced each other, seemed to prop up the basic premise of the play itself: tradition versus modernity. There was a distant, elevated screen on which multimedia visuals were being flashed to suit changing physical locations. This seemed to interfere with what was happening on stage, particularly with the play being extremely wordy and hence the anxiety of losing out. However, if Prakash was using it as a mere tool to establish the invasive powers of technology and not for any definitive effect, then one should perhaps grant him that.

The success of the stage production was also in the fact that it sharpens many contrasts which are subtle in the text. The rather opinionated Joyisa (Sripathi Manjanabailu), who always has answers in the past, holds his sons in contempt, votaries of modernity with worldly concerns. Towards, the end one sees him evolve towards introspection and a sympathetic realisation that his sons have little choice but to make compromises with the new economy and technology. What remains with you even after the play, is Kittu’s poignant comment about technology when a laptop enters their lives: “I feel scared Bhami… I somehow think the line between life and imagination is getting blurred…”

The scene which has Pu.Ti. Na’s poem “Shishira Kusuma…” was particularly effective. Kittu, played brilliantly by S.K. Raghavendra, speaks of journeys and anxieties, even as the song which celebrates the spirit of the place, plays in the background. It so wonderfully captures the notion of self with respect to the landscape that is so venerated, as opposed to the notion of self in modernity that looks upon land as commerce. And it is the very same Kittu who speaks of blurring lines, ushers you into the Swayamvaraloka in a Wordsworthian sense, with a suspension of disbelief. But with all this, the production doesn’t completely eliminate the danger of the hilarious element making light of the underlying sorrow. Also, what works in literature doesn’t necessarily work in the visual medium. There is the peril of the abstract not materialising as experience. And so, the play could have done with some editing. In a play of ideas, a character can slip into being either a caricature or a type. This is true of the text, and is true of the stage production too.

The Abhinaya Taranga students were no less than repertory-trained actors. They were very convincing and played their roles to near perfection. The music team was very competent too. The recurring “Barutihane Vaarijalochana” was beautiful, not just in the musical sense, but also as what it meant in the play. The production, marked by discipline, also showed signs of a serious engagement with the script. This is surely an effort that will stand Prakash Belawadi in good stead.