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| Only when you have courage to lose sight of the shore, you can discover the oceans! - Dr. Kalam |
Often he would ask me, "You are young! decide what will you like to be remembered for?" I kept thinking of new impressive answers, till one day I gave up and resorted to tit-for-tat. I asked him back, "First you tell me, what will you like to be remembered for? President, Scientist, Writer, Missile man, India 2020, Target 3 billion... What? I thought I had made the question easier by giving options, but he sprang on me a surprise. "Teacher", he said.
A theatre-enthusiast’s take on Prof. Rajani’s tryst with Theatre
By Mr. Vinodh Venkata Krishna
“Will you do your lines
from the beginning?”
“Are you thinking your lines, child?”
“Why is your stance so clumsy?”
“Energy level is sinking!”
“Give pauses”
“Not clear child”
“Don’t slouch!!”
“You are rushing through your lines!”
If you were to be present during the practice sessions of Curtain Call, you are likely to hear the above sentences often from Dr. P. Rajani, Emeritus Professor, under whose tutelage the theatre group of the University of Madras has made great strides in the past decade.
A veteran director of over 100 plays (he says he has lost count), Prof. Rajani, who taught English at the Madras Christian College (MCC), belongs to the tradition of Indian English Theatre.
The theatre group of MCC is probably the oldest in this part of the country as its productions date to a period well before the 1960s. In the early 1970s Dr. Rajani, took over the mantle from Prof. G.K. Mathew of the same college.
In 1998 he joined the Department of English at the University of Madras and with the guidance, help and encouragement from Dr. C. T. Indra, former Head, Department of English, University of Madras, he started Curtain Call, which draws students from the various departments of the University as also from affiliated colleges such as MCC, Loyola College, Stella Maris College, WCC, Ethiraj College and Meenakshi College. In recent times overseas students have been a regular feature of his productions.
Foundation for a play
A fastidious director, Prof. Rajani does his homework before beginning a play. “I choose a play keeping the cast in mind. Having trained them for nearly four months I know the strengths and weaknesses of each of my players. Some of them fit into their roles perfectly; with others there is a period of experimentation,” he says.
All who join the course in Theatre and Communication (offered as an elective) are greenhorns whose skills have to be carefully brought out and honed. Some are full of promise, but inhibited for some reason or the other. Extra effort goes into drawing them out, and more often than not the reward is sweet.
Many an actor has grown in stature after the first production. He has no favourites as, “that would destroy the work of others…. merit, merit, merit. If you don’t have it you have no place in my theatre,” he avers.
Training
Students opting for the course in Theatre and Communication are subjected to a four-month rigorous training in stage craft, lighting, speech, pronunciation, body language, and presence of mind to improvise and innovate on stage and dialogue writing.
Rehearsals for a play commence at least two months before the day of actual performance. “Roughly, I spend one day for every minute on stage,” says Prof. Rajani. On an average, during the week days, the duration of the rehearsals is two hours and during the weekends it is five hours.
Needless to say that it is sheer hard work that ensures that every production rises above the mediocre. Students’ social life takes a beating once rehearsals begin, which go on uninterrupted, notwithstanding public holidays, festivals or weekends. Perfection is the watch word of every production with nothing left to chance.
Midway through a production someone might opt out but it has never put the play in jeopardy as the actors are trained to play multiple roles and each character knows the lines of the entire text.
Any teamwork is incomplete without its share of tiffs and altercations and as the D-day approaches, Prof. Rajani is in his foulest moods. But once the work is over, it is time for reconciliation and time to begin work on another play.
Feminist orientation
“Most of the plays of Curtain Call have a feminist orientation. Why is that so?” His response was immediate, “The young ladies come with zeal, a natural flair, and a call that is hard to describe.
Quick to learn and willing to apply, they soon outmatch their male counterparts, with the result that they become an integral part of every production and often enough take on male roles without any inhibition. It is apparent that there is in them an inner urge to unlock the emotions and passions that have been denied a legitimate and meaningful outlet.
And theatre provides the occasion and the space for such a release in an artistic manner, the play scripts being used to communicate their needs, their fears and their longings. Theatre has become a rallying point for the young ladies to speak their mind with ‘full-throated ease’.
Every rehearsal is a journey into self-discovery and the creation of a distinct identity. He hastens to add, “I love women, but where theatre is concerned they walk in on merit.”
Hence, it is no wonder that Curtain Call transcends gender distinctions on stage. Women have played male roles with ease and to perfection.
For instance, Reshma Raju played the lead role of Basanna in Jokumaraswami by Chandrasekar Kambar. Similarly, Amrutha Karayil played the role of saint Ramanuja in the play Ramanujar by Indra Parthasarathy which was sponsored by the Oxford University Press and staged at Tag Centre.
Since the focus is on conveying the idea or message of the play, these women have never had second thought or difficulty to step into the shoes of a male character. What is more, the audience was not perturbed by this transference on the stage.
Multiple roles
The actors of Curtain Call are trained to play multiple roles. Financially it is not viable to support a large cast and each actor may have to play several roles as happened in the case of April Raintree (scripted by Dr. Rajani), which was based on the Canadian novel, In Search of April Raintree by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. K Muthu Raman, M David Wesley, Aravinth S, and E Kavi Priya played multiple roles.
Care is taken to ensure that the actors are able to individuate each role. After a successful run at the University of Madras, the play was taken to Kannur University and All Saints College, Thiruvananthapuram.
Occasion
“Why is it that your plays are not performed before the Chennai audience in a regular theatre? People hardly know your existence.” After a momentary pause comes the reply:
“We don’t have that kind of money or manpower to make ourselves more visible. But our work gets recognised at National and International conferences, where after a day’s dreary and soul killing paper presentations, the plays emphatically reinforce the themes of the conference, holding the attention of the audience for over 90 minutes. Papers are forgotten and the participants carry home the memories of the plays”.
Curtain Call’s plays have been funded by the UGC, USIEF, US Public Affairs Department, the Australian and Canadian High Commissions and book publishers, and performed at Kannur, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore, Mysore, New Delhi, Vellore, Trichy and Chennai.
Professional vs. Amateur
How professional is Curtain Call? It is a slender demarcation. “I’ve watched plays in the city for years and my students from MCC/Madras University were/are no less talented than the self-styled professionals. Acting apart, our productions lose out in terms of stage setting, costumes, and public relations,” opines Dr. Rajani.
During its ten-year existence, Curtain Call has produced several memorable plays like Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain, Louis Nowra’s Radiance, David Williamson’s Brilliant Lies, Jane Harrison’s Stolen, Franka Rame and Dario Fo’s A Woman Alone, Susan Lori Park’s Top Dog/Under Dog, Morton Wishengrad’s The Rope Dancers, Drew Hayden Taylor’s Some Day, Chandrasekhar Kambar’s Jokumaraswami and Beatrice Culleton Mosionier’s April Raintree.
Curtain Call has also transformed poetry and fiction into play scripts, chief among them being Dying is an Art (based on the life and works of Sylvia Plath), Coetze’s Disgrace, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Bama’s Vanmam-Vendetta.
Page to Stage to Page
The work of Curtain Call does not stop with converting play scripts into performance on stage. It has inspired several students to write their M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. dissertations on drama. Naga Radhika, who was actively associated with Curtain Call, worked on the Australian Aboriginal women playwrights and was recently awarded the doctoral degree.
Another young lady, S. Annapoorni, is currently registered for a similar programme, specializing in text-performance dialectics.
Students speak
Response from the students has been positive with even overseas students – Taiwan, China, France and America - opting for the course in Theatre and Communication. In recent times students from the North East have taken to theatre in a big way.
Theatre liberates an individual; given the sanction of text and stage, one could say and do things one can’t in real life (Mamta U).
Theatre is interaction with larger life (Chandrashekar Srinivasan)
Playing the role of Nora in A Doll’s House was a challenge. It was shocking and liberating (Aparna Raman).
I want to take theatre to Nagaland. Teach it at the university and become the first director of English plays there (Imsuchila Kichu).
I joined the Madras University because I wanted to be actively involved with its theatre productions (Viju Cherian).
I was reticent, meek and withdrawn. A role in April Raintree changed all that and today I am confident and self-assured (Saritha Bhaskaran).
I got a job in leading English daily in Delhi on the strength of my experience on stage.
It would also be fitting to recall the names of former students Nicola Jeremiah, Aarthi Krishnaswami, Craig Fernandes, Ricardo Brass, Shruthi Ramanathan, Gayathri and Priya Joseph whose sterling performances in Dying is an Art, Radiance, Stolen, Brilliant Lies and Top Dog/Under Dog were instrumental in giving Curtain Call an international recognition, winning it accolades from the American playwright, Susan Lori Park, former Australian High Commissioner, and many overseas scholars and academicians.
PS: Vinodh Venkata Krishna did his Undergraduation in Physics at MCC (2003-06) and went on to pursue his Masters with the University of Madras, where he was part of Curtain Call (2007-2009) and he has also performed in a couple of its productions.
This article was published in Eclectic Representations, a peer-reviewed Journal of the Research Department of English, Madras Christian College (Autonomous), Chennai, INDIA.