Behind the scenes of Curtain Call

“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 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 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.

Students are welcome to the shows of Curtain Call. Entry is free as the chief aim is to promote theatre.

PS: I was part of Curtain Call (2007-2009) and have performed in a couple of its productions.

Interview with Dr.C.T.Indra (Head, Dept. of English, University of Madras)

INTERVIEW.

(Thanks to Dr.P.Rajani, Professor Emeritus, University of Madras, who gave the idea of doing an interview on the book.Incidentally, I played the role of Periya Nambi in the play based on the book, directed by him).




The book ‘Ramanujar-the life and ideas’ was released on 19/12/2007 in Chennai, at a function, presided over by N. Ravi, Editor, The Hindu . The book is in the form of a play, originally written by the famous playwright, Indira Parthasarathy in Tamil, in 1997. It was translated by T.Sriraman, professor, English and Foreign languages University (EFLU). Dr.C.T. Indra, Head, Department of English, Madras University has written a critique for the book.

(Dr. C.T. Indra,Director of the International Centre at the University of Madras in Chennai, is largely responsible for the introduction and success of an Australian Studies course (Masters), which allows postgraduate students to specialise in the work of Australian writers. Instrumental in setting up the Australian Studies Resources Collection in the English Department, Dr Indra's endeavours were recognised last year with an Australia-India Council Special Award for outstanding partnership. Dr. Indra has also been a recipient of a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Harvard University, a British Council visitorship to Cambridge University, and a Faculty Enrichment Award to Canada from the Shastri Indo Canadian Institute. Her seminar for the Centre for Colonialism and Its Aftermath at the University of Tasmania reciprocates the regular visits made to the University of Madras in the past few years by Ralph Crane, Anna Johnston, and Lucy Frost.)

http://colonial.arts.utas.edu.au/Indrabio.html

The play was performed at the book release function by the students of theatre wing of Madras University, Curtain Call, directed by Dr. Rajani. We (Aravinth. S and I) spoke to Dr.C.T. Indra on the book and Ramanuja. Excerpts…..

Please tell us, how the book took shape and explain the idea and the effort behind the book.

The book is in two parts. The Tamil play is translated by my friend Dr. Sriraman and I have written a long critique, which is almost as many pages as the text. Nearly half the book is locating the text. This book came up for the prestigious Saraswati Samman award of the K.K.Birla foundation in Delhi. I was one of the selection committee members. When I read this book, I was interested in the importance of the Vaishnava pontiff Ramannuja, who opened up Hinduism and spiritual knowledge to the larger society, who was a benevolent figure.

In 2002-03, I translated Indira Parthasarathy's famous play, the legend of Nandan, which was called as ‘Nandan Kadhai.’ That translation received good review. It sold out so quickly abroad. A little later my friend Dr.Sriraman applied for a UGC project. He is a Professor and Dean, working in CIEFL, now renamed as English and Foreign Languages University. When he translated the Ramanuja play of Indra Parthasarathy and sent it to me, I thought people will not follow the implications and historical importance of Ramanuja unless we situate him once again as we did in case of “The Legend of Nandan.”

So Sriraman asked me to go ahead with a critique on the book. I wrote the extended critique of hagiography, which technically means, the life of a saint. So, I read a lot of biographies on Ramanuja including an original ‘Manipravala’ biography which is the medieval Tamil or Tamil and Sanskrit combination. I also read Ramakrishnananda’s first Bengali biography on Ramanuja which was translated into English and published in 1901 or so from Madras Ramakrishna mutt. Also I read Vaali’s (poet from the film world) biography on Ramanuja which was published in 2004. Then I read works of Christian theologians and scholars who took interest in the life of Ramanuja.

The basic issue is how Dr. Parthasarathy goes back to the original sources because, in case of Nandanar Charitram, he went back to the original text and completely reworked the story. Because, Parthasarathy as a writer wants to attend to the issue of caste and discrimination in society, and how power is located in certain groups and, bhakti was used to victimize the person. We later made them saints, as we did in the case of Nandanar, where we push him into fire and later make him a saint. So he completely deconstructed the story. In case of Ramanuja also he deconstructed the original story to some extent. He went back to various sources and said that he was rewriting some parts of it.

What was the motivation behind the English translation of the play?

Dr. Sriraman and I thought that we should understand our culture. For that we need to go back to enlightened teachers and their lives and learn how they confronted social and historical situations. In this play, there is such a situation. It is not entirely original but, it is from the medieval narratives. But, this foregrounds certain positive possibilities for contemporary society like, how to treat women, how to treat other religious people, how to treat people in their own community, how to run a temple and how to have a multi cultural society so that everybody has a role to play .That was a positive aspect.

Another thing of my interest was, I have been a translator, not a prolific translator though. Very often prominence is given to people like Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnard. Oxford University has also published their plays. Their plays are prescribed to read all over. But, there are very good playwrights coming from other regions where some very important questions are asked about our society. Therefore, I thought that translation should not be simply translating from one language to another. We must situate that and help the reader to get a larger picture of the text which is society, ideology.

What’s your contribution to the book?

In Nandan Kadhai I wrote an extended critique and applied a new historicism. Here I applied deconstruction and I wrote specially on hagiography. That is because; I feel that our translated text is part of Indian literature in English. Indian literature in English is not only what R.K.Narayan or Arundhati Roy has written. This is also Indian literature in English. And, through translation this literature is available. I believe Nandan Kadhai was sold out as soon as it was published. Many people from abroad, especially US alone, took many copies. This is the way we should situate the text and we should also see how the Indian literature corpus grows. Oxford University Press has done a lot of good work in this regard. Earlier they translated a text into English, but now, we not only do the text. The text itself becomes the entire culture and history. That is my contribution to the book

How much did Dr. Parthasarathy improvise the play?

An important aspect is that Ramanuja is not only meeting the Jain kings but also the Muslim king. At that point of time, north had a strong Muslim rule. Dr. Parthasarathy being a modern writer thinks that Ramanuja would not have gone all the way to Delhi. He would have probably gone to a central Indian Sultanate in the Deccan region. Even then he introduces two important reforms in the play. The Chola king isn’t treated as a bigot of Saiva sect. This was not there in the original narrative at all. They say that he was a bigoted ruler who persecuted Ramanuja. In the play he was made a neutral character.

Second thing, Parthasarathy made a very good use of Ramanuja’s visit to the Sultanate. There he introduces a very good exchange of ideas between Islamic mind and Hindu mind like what is God, what’s the role of women, what is beauty, what is supernatural, what is the role of men and so on. Therefore he created an amiable situation. So there is no hostility towards Muslims and they are not projected as raiders.

Does perception of the translator play a role in the translation?

The translator is also the one who is not the writer and he may have different views or ideology. Do you literally translate or do you create a new text entirely? I don’t think that we have created a new text. New text in the sense, something that was not there in the original narrative. My argument is that Dr. Parthasarathy himself is a translator because he goes back to some original text and what he writes is simply a new creation. That’s why we moved into writing a critique on that. In that critique I have criticized Parthasarathy because Periya Nambi was more radical than Ramanuja himself. When I interviewed him he said that his play was about Ramanuja and not about Periya Nambi. So critic and writer are both translators here in this case. The definition of translation must itself be enlarged.

How do you see Ramanuja in the social context?

Ramanuja was the first one to establish solidarity in a large region, in the entire South India. He made bhakti an amenable method available to everybody. Sociologically speaking, I would also argue that he was the first to establish a diasporic community in Karnataka. It was after he moved to Karnataka, many Tamilians moved to Karnataka.

Here I used not only hagiography but also epigraphy. Half my writing is about what epigraphy says about Ramanuja’s work in Karnataka. I also read about Kannada versions of how he created a community cutting across borders, regions and kingdoms and so on for this book.

How secular and pluralistic was Ramanuja in his ideas and approach?

One important historical detail is, in all Vaishnavite temples, we have a small shrine for a Muslim girl, Thurukka Nachiar. Thurushka was the term used in all medieval narratives to refer the Turkish invader. In Tamil it became Thurukka. It refers to anyone who comes from Middle East, Kazakhstan and so on. But crossing over this religious bigotry, Ramanuja was able to bring this little girl and even today in all Vaishnava shrines, a little Muslim girl has a separate shrine. I say this because I come from a Vaishnava family. There is a special prayer offered to her. This is one major contribution that Ramanuja made.

What was Ramanuja’s view on caste?

Ramanuja is not only for Vaishnava as a sect. Throughout the play one question is asked. “Who is a Vaishnavite?” I went back to many texts to find out what is the definition of Vaishnava. One who worships Vishnu is not just a Vaishnava. I came across an explanation in Nammazhvar’s ‘pasuram’ through professor Raghavan of Vaishnavism Department. One who could not bear the suffering of another person is a Vaishnavite and Ramanuja had that compassion. He was very friendly to hunters, tribal people etc. I argue that he might not have been immediately transformed, but when he saw them suffering, he felt that he mustn’t put them out of social or religious order. One of the things he did was, he gave ‘Vaishnava Samskara’ to all the people. Earlier, the question, who could wear the sacred thread and other things, was restricted to Brahmin community. But Ramanuja gave it to hunters and other people lower down the order. It was the effort of Ramanuja which extended the fold of Vaishnavism and people after that realsised the catholicity of Ramanuja and Vaishnavism and therefore, society loosened it up after that due to it.

You have written much on Periya Nambi.How important is he in the play?

Ramanuja had five teachers and one of his great teachers was Mahapurna or Periya Nambi. Periya Nambi supported and helped a ‘panchama’ named Maraneri Nambi. After Alavandar’s demise and Ramanuja became the pontiff, Periya Nambi took care of Maraneri Nambi. He considered him a noble soul and even gave him the ‘prasadam’ of the Srirangam temple. Also the rights to him after his death, usually given to the ‘upper caste’ people those days. In the original Tamil narrative, Ramanuja was frightened with this radical step of Periya Nambi. Ramanuja told Periya Nambi that he wanted to reform the society but, didn’t want to break all the fences .He wanted to gradually make people accept changes.

In the play, Indira Parthasarathy gives the entire Mahapurna dialogue to Ramanuja. So that Ramanuja is shown as a much more radical teacher than probably he was or he was allowed to be at that time. But, the effort is worth making because, in all the biographies and narratives of Ramanuja that I read, he was considered as a very open minded and benevolent man. He was also persecuted by the politicians of that time. So he had to run away to Karnataka where the Jains were dominant at that time. There he lived as a refuge in a cave. Dr. Parthasarathy is not worried about whether there was a political persecution .Rather he did a good thing in the play. He gave lead role to women .Ramanuja was very respectful towards women and he brought women into the pontificate. He didn’t make distinction between Brahmins and non-Brahmins and all these things were recorded even in the sectarian narratives. What I try to argue is his teacher was even more radical.

What’s Ramanuja’s contribution to Tamil language, as he hails from Tamil Nadu?

He introduced Tamil as a form of worship only for the first time in Karnataka. Earlier, in temples, only Sanskrit was the language of worship. After Nammazhvar, Alavandar and Nathamuni, Tamil hymns like Nalayira Divyaprabandam came to be given the status of scripture. Ramanuja, when he took over the pontificate introduced regular Tamil worship in temples on stated days and such persons are presented in the epigraphy as ‘Ubaya Vedanta’ sect, one who is not only proficient in Sanskrit but also in Tamil. Therefore it’s also as sacred as Sanskrit.

It’s stated in Karnataka epigraphs that for so many days, Nalayira Divyaprabandam should be recited. So, it was Ramanuja who organized temple worship and made egalitarian worship possible. This was his major contribution.

How inclusive and broad minded was Ramanuja in his teachings?

One good thing that Dr. Parthasarathy has done in this play is, for long it was thought Vaishnavism was another sect of Hinduism and, it was opposed to Saivism ,but he has explained how Ramanuja conceived of Vaishnavism ;it is not a sect ,it is almost a broad minded definition of Hinduism. That is why if any body understands Ramannuja very well they should not regard it as a sect like Protestants and Catholics.

But in the history, even in the historical narrative about Ramanuja; it was only a sectarian view that was taken. I have argued against the sectarian view that was taken by hagiographers .Another thing helped me was in the Madras University in 2003 in the History Dept, Prof. M.S.Govindaswami from Annamalai University delivered two lectures on Ramanuja. He argued that Saiva king was not a bigot, he was not opposed to Ramanuja, and Saiva king was not against Vaishnavism, though largely they were Saivaites. They also supported and helped to renovate Vaishnava temples. He gave two lectures at that time. I didn't listen to him but I managed to get the text of it and, then one more Tamil prof, who taught me, Prof. Kandasamy, published letters in Journal of Tamil Studies . That came at the last minute when I was finalizing the critique. So I could give reference from both lecture version and also the journal. There he is arguing that Ramanuja was such a noble man .He was not sectarian and king of Chola kingdom was not sectarian. So I understand Vaishnavism from the teaching of Ramanuja as way of dealing with people, it is not a sect; it is a large view of Hinduism.

What was Ramanuja’s reach? Was he a pan-Indian reformer?

I understand from people who have better knowledge in the subject that, it was only after Ramanuja, Vaishnavism as a kind of broad bhakthi movement spread in Maharastra and then, went up to Bengal and finally reached Chaitanya and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Some of the Maharastrian saints and reformers were influenced by Ramanuja. So Ramanuja’s step into the kind situation is very important for Indian social history and Indian bhakthi movement. He really created that entry point particularly to Maharastra and then to rest of northern India and Bengal. Bengal Vaishnavism, we talk about Paramahamsa, Chaitanya. Therefore, he is considered to be instrumental in making it into a pan Indian format, and it is now acknowledged that from the time of Andal it started. I wouldn’t call it a movement because it spreads over centuries, so it was not a continuous development and a movement is something more self consciously done. Ramanuja was doing it self consciously .He treated himself as a descendant of Nathamuni .But after Ramanuja, people took over the light from Ramanuja, and bhakthi was to became an egalitarian movement .It was because of Ramanuja it is really a pan Indian movement.

What was Ramanuja’s role in the decline of Buddhism?

This does not arise in the case of Ramanuja. In the case of Sankara, yes, because he had to confront them. There are no Buddhists in any of the narratives and, in the case of the Jains, he actually he ran away from the cave and thousands of them confronted him and asked him to debate, the writings say that he won and converted the Karnataka king into a Vaishnavite. But, epigraphists say, the king was not a Jain, he was not to be converted and Krishna worship was already right there.

What was his idea of India and his contribution to national integration?

At that point of time, interaction with Muslim king could have been antagonistic. He was not aware of Islam at all but, he did meet them. But he moved from town to city, to tribal forest, to desert region. He had an idea that India consisted of many geographical locales and many kinds of people. At all times, as I have written, he is a reconciler par excellence.

What purpose would this book serve in the literary context?

Today literary study is very close to cultural studies, I am not an expert in cultural studies but my whole idea was to help the Department and to move in that direction. In the last few years, we introduced post colonialism, theory and studies; we introduced Australian studies, because all writings are in some way culturally inscribed .One should know one’s own culture and literature. A student, who comes from village or different kind of community, is able to respond better when you have a larger context in which he locates text. Therefore, research also helps you to know who you are, what your professional background is, and what is your little contribution for the world of literal studies, cultural studies etc. I did research in 1990 on new historicism and cultural materialism and 10 years later, that research helped me in writing  the legend of Nandanar. It is really expanding the horizon of literary studies and, that I have set that motto for Department 10 years ago.

Could you summarise Ramanuja in a few lines?

My perception is, at the time when society was ‘strict and orthodox,’ Ramanuja moved towards an egalitarian society. I would not say he was a radical reformer like Ambedkar. Actually Vaali is arguing like that in the verse biography. I would say that he was very sensitive to human beings and their spirit. He had respect for people. When he was a pontiff, he had some restrictions even as Pope has certain restrictions, but he opened up the boundaries of spiritual knowledge. After all, what is the end of life, to realise the highest values, to bring happiness. I think Ramanuja attempted that slowly and gradually. He lived at least for eighty years, traditional hagiography says, he lived for 120 years. He was not a radical reformer, but if he had lived in a slightly different situation, he could have been a radical reformer but, he was certainly a visionary in envisaging an egalitarian society, a liberal mind set.