Art & Entertainment

Azad The Obscure

Playwrights wake up to new faces and facets of history. The stage is set.

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Azad The Obscure
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Bhutam Kin Karoti Na Paapam
Maulana Azad
3, Sakina Manzil
bhutam
Dreams of Tipu Sultan
Mata Hidimba
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Among other 'overlooked' characters recently coaxed out of the hibernaculums of history and onto the proscenium is Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen who was born as a prince in Kanchipuram, in Zen Katha. A Pakistani production based on Bhagat Singh's betrayers toured India last October. And Goonda, from the National School of Drama, that focuses on 19th century feudals who sided with the Maharaja of Benares to oust the British.

An unexpected reward for most performances? Audiences. Audiences who've silenced their cellphones before settling into school halls and high-priced auditoria to meet history's odd-bods. When disappointed, they've silently filed out, like with Sathyu's Dara Shikoh. When enthralled, they've responded with a standing ovation to Maulana Azad—and his views on Jinnah to jasmine tea. Raves critic Kavita Nagpal: "Couched in wonderful language, Tom Alter's cerebral enactment of Azad didn't depend on any extraneous stage effects. " Since opening in 2002, the play has toured major metros except Ahmedabad, where the Gujarat Censor Board banned it in November '03—without any written reason.

"Playwrights need space to imagine, they're now venturing into shadow areas," says Shanta Gokhale, critic and author of a Marathi drama encyclopedia. On the Marathi stage, Gandhi virudh Gandhi, which saw Bapu through the eyes of son Harilal, has been followed by Anandowari that explores saint Tukaram through his little-known brother Kanoba.

Often, recording overlooked voices is not easy. But in Agra Bazaar, Habib Tanvir, even with no written records, does just that recapturing poet Nazir Akbarabadi's verse as it lives on in people's memories. While Ramanathan, when researching Mumbai's dock explosions for 3, Sakina Manzil, spent months with film scholar Amrit Gangar "guiding me like Virgil, through the khopchis (alleys) of Pydhonie and the Dock Yard to meet survivors".

Playwright Partap Sharma didn't have it any easier. "Despite being born as a Pallava prince circa 400 AD, Bodhidharma is tragically undocumented in India," he says. Only after a visit to China's Shaolin temple where he saw "frescoes, statues of Bodhidharma", and talks with a deputy abbot, could Sharma pen Zen Katha.

Since its opening in last August, the play has got good houses. Even in far off Ludhiana. "Ex-British PM John Major came for our Delhi show," gushes director Lillete Dubey. This, despite a cast of amateurs bumbling about as Cholas and Pallavas like children playing chor-police. As critic Jiten Merchant puts it, "Informativeness is the only virtue of this play."

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Mahadevbhai, based on the life of the Mahatma's secretary Mahadev Desai, has been a more successful experiment. Seventy shows old, they're still on the road, thanks to some frugal planning. Using a set that "folds under two berths of a sleeper", director Jaimini Pathak has performed half the shows for students, from Mussoorie to Hyderabad, in a bid to "bring alive the non-textbook Gandhi".

Meanwhile, what has also come to the fore is that slowly the art-and-activism credo that powered ipta and others is getting stubbed out. Says an exasperated Ramanathan: "It's becoming impossible to find actors who don't subscribe to regressive politics. Most times, I hear their views on women or minorities and simply leave the room."

Mirroring this societal decay is Shobhayatra, written by Shafaat Khan in Marathi in '98. It presents common citizens dressed as Gandhi, Nehru, Bose, Tilak and the Rani of Jhansi, at a procession funded by a don. The parade gets delayed, resulting in hilarious moments when the temporary Tilak whines about the weight of his turban and the Gandhi character gripes about the itch from his khadi dhoti.

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A runaway success, Shobhayatra's film adaptation will be released this week in Delhi and Mumbai. Says director Vijay Ghatge: "I've always wanted to film it...a post-modernist script connecting the Babri Masjid demolitions to the hypocritical facades people shelter behind."

This year might even herald a script based on the last hours of January 30, 1948, just before Nathuram Godse fired at Mahatma Gandhi. "I knew many people from Godse's inner circle, like his brother Gopal and Senapati Bapat. I have a feel for the situation," says Vijay Tendulkar. If it translates to the audience too, we might have another contentious classic penned by India's greatest playwright.

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