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| Boy with a Suitcase |
I LOVE THEATRE. As much as I love writing, reading, travelling ~ or even breathing, I guess.
At school in Jaipur, I loved being on stage. Transforming
into an 8-year-old boy in shorts at 15, playing Red Indians and cowboys, Minnie
Mouse voice, silken ponytail, and all. Or being an ancient crone in a ghost
story, with my hair powdered and streaked, my brow artfully etched with eye
pencil.
But what I loved just as much was watching scenes come
alive once the curtains went up. Especially when Geoffrey and Laura Kendall’s
Shakespearana troupe visited us at Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School
annually. Their dramatic opening line still lingers in my memory, words I took
with me to Stratford-on-Avon and the recreated Globe theatre in London, ‘When
Shakespeare played, the stage was bare, the throne of England was a chair in
Shakespeare’s time…’
I felt so at ease while reviewing English theatre in
Madras (not yet Chennai) during my first decade at Indian Express, especially
brilliant productions at the Museum Theatre by directors and players like Vimal
Bhagat, Ammu Matthew, Mithran Devanesan, and Nirupama Nityanandan.
When I relocated to Bangalore in May 1992, I went
into mourning. As a viewer, I felt theatre during the Deccan Herald festival
fell flat at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, so large, so impersonal, with acoustics
more suited to music than theatre. Even Ravindra Kalakshetra, where I watched my
first magical Ratan Thiyam play, seemed cold when compared to the Museum
Theatre.
As if in answer to my prayers, Ranga Shankara was
inaugurated in J.P. Nagar in October 2004. I have been in celebration mode ever
since. The intimate space is perfect and heart-warming. So is the endearing
warmth of its founder Arundhati Nag.
Now that Ranga Shankara turns ten in October 2014, I
look back with wonder ~ and tenderness and incandescent joy. As a theatre buff,
I would like to offer a personal tribute by sharing ten random, unforgettable moments
through which I celebrate the first decade of Ranga Shankara. Here goes:
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| Arundhati Nag |
~ ~ Listening to Arundhati Nag share the
theatre’s raison d’etre in 2004,
during an interview I did for The Hindu
Sunday Magazine: “This theatre will strive to bring Karnataka to the centre
stage of world theatre, as well as to bring world-class theatre to the common
man in Karnataka.” A dream achieved, quite irrefutably.
~ ~
The dazzling 35-day global inaugural festival
from October- December 2004. It included Mysore-based Rangayana’s
Kudiyattam-influenced Maya Sita Prasanga.
And Habib Tanvir and his Naya Theatre’s spectacular Charan Das Chor in Chattisgarhi. And Imphal-based Chorus Repertory
Theatre’s stunning presentation of Ratam Thiyam’s visually poetic Ritusamharam. I was enthused enough to
attend 27 of the shows!
~
November 2004. Lahore-based Ajoka
Theatre’s Ek Thi Nani, in which
theatre veterans Zohra Sehgal and Uzra Butt played out a plotline parallel to
their own lives as sisters. Sehgal, then 92, had a fever when she stepped off
her flight. But her never-say-die spirit saw her through to a standing ovation,
bypassing coughs, pills and improvisations. I salute them both, onstage and off
it.
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| Measure for Measure |
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~ November 2005. Director Simon McBurney
and his Euro-British Complicite theatre set the stage on fire with his interpretation
of Measure for Measure as a take on
the Bard for our time. Electrifying both
as drama and social commentary. I even interviewed McBurney between two
back-to-back performances, the chai he requested brought to us by young
playwright Swar Thounaojam. More recently, Swar’s plays have come to life at
Ranga Shankara.
·
~ June 2006. Germany-based Gracias Devaraj
and Uwe Topmann in Nino D’Introna and Giocomo Raviccio’s ‘Robinson and Crusoe,’ a rollicking tale of two warring soldiers
marooned together. Enacted in English and (yes!) gibberish, it had an audience
of mainly schoolchildren rocking with laughter in their seats. As adults,
hugging our knees on the steps and in the aisles, we joined in.
·
~ April 2008. Under the Mangosteen Tree, directed by Rajiv Krishnan of Perch from
Chennai. That was in its initial avatar as Sangathi
Arinhya, a celebration of Malayalam writer Vaikom Mohammed Basheer’s life,
personality and brilliant stories through a tight-knit, evocative production.
In tandem with black-and-white images of Basheer’s life by Punaloor Rajan and a
Moplah food festival at Anju’s in-house café.
·
~ June 2011. The stellar Indo-German
premiere of Boy with a Suitcase,
which I found rivetting enough to revisit thrice with different friends in tow.
A Ranga Shankara collaboration with Mannheim’s Schnawwl Theatre, it captured
dilemmas about culture, continents and identity brilliantly, especially through
outstanding performances by M.D. Pallavi and Shrunga B.V.
·
~ March 2012: Director Sunil Shanbag’s Stories in a Song, his tribute to music
as theatre (in collaboration with Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan). Spanning
seven theatrical anecdotes (some
apocryphal?), it encompassed notes from Sufi geet to Kajri, brilliantly held
together by seasoned performers
·
~ October 2012: An outstanding global
Shakespeare festival. Still luminous in memory thanks to plays like Atul
Kumar’s Piya Bahurupiya (Twelfth
Night) in nautanki style, the Tblisi-based Marjanishvili Theatre’s Rogort’s Genebot (As You Like It) in Georgian (a play within a
play, with backstage onstage and exquisite costumes), and even a Kiswahili
rendition of The Merry Wives of Windsor,
notable for its impeccable comic timing.
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| The Kitchen |
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~ August 2013. Roysten Abel’s totally
experiential theatre in The Kitchen,
inspired by Rumi’s kitchen at Konya in Turkey. Its highlights included a 22.5
ft. high set, 12 mizhavu drummers from Kerala live, and two actors cooking
payasam from scratch onstage for the audience to taste when the last notes died
down. Calling sight, sound, taste, smell and touch into play, we experienced
theatre as a microcosm of life.
*
* *
Thank you, Ranga Shankara for
bringing the best of local and global theatre to me. For energizing me to dash
from Cooke Town to J.P. Nagar every time you bring a good play to Bangalore.
For tempting me with sabudana vada and akki rotti at Anju’s Café, so I am never
late for a show.
I had not imagined such a dream run
when I first watched the staircase, the toilets, the café, the box-office and more
fall into place over slow months in 2003- 2004.
What can I wish you now, dear Arundhati
and Team Ranga Shankara? Cheers to the next brilliant decade! And perhaps the
next hundred years?
Bangalore loves you. So do I.
