All the World's a Stage
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life - Oscar Wilde
When Madurai Messenger (formerly Times of Madurai) decided to devote this issue to a theatre special (to commemorate World Theatre Day on March 27), we had an unexpected opportunity to watch the play Hind Swaraj (based on Mahatma Gandhi's book of the same name written in 1908) performed by Parnab Mukherjee and Cordis Paldano at the Madurai Messenger office.
Hind Swaraj was an unusual play in more ways than one. The audience consisted of a group of 25 people seated in a semi circle. The two lead actors deftly used this intimate inner space as their 'stage'. As the play unfolded Parnab Mukherjee and Cordis Paldano effortlessly juxtaposed the past and present; the global and the local through a series of never before seen film footage, photographs, monologues, or reactions to a text. They conveyed the sub texts of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj clearly and provocatively. We were in a state of animated disbelief. The energy was palpable. Individually and collectively we reacted to the text. Many of us felt angry. Others violated. Some ashamed. We experienced intense emotions.
The actors stirred still ponds. The cobwebs festooning our vision floated by in wisps and we 'saw' and 'heard'- in ways never before. Barriers dissolved and the performers and the audience were One. When I watched the performance at another setting later in the day the actor (Mukherjee) reinvented his lines in response to local realities. If it was the issue of illegal immigrants in a global context, it was racial and ethnic identity in another- the repertoire was as inexhaustible as the complexities and contradictions of being human in an increasingly inhuman world.
This sparked off another theatre-related memory dating back to my childhood. As a ten-year-old I was unaware of the legendary reputation of Geoffrey and Laura Kendall when they performed The Merchant of Venice at the school where I studied in Madras (now Chennai). It did not matter to me that the British couple with their company Shakespearana travelled throughout the country and had staged nearly 1000 productions of Shakespearean plays and other classics. It was only much later that I realised I had had the privilege of watching the Kendalls perform. But what mattered to me was the ability of the actors to connect with the audience. Geoffrey Kendal's intense stage presence and piercing blue eyes struck an electric chord with us. We related to the play- each of us in our own ten-year-old ways, I suppose. Today despite the intervening decades I still recall his booming voice as he exhorted us to request our parents to take us to Venice and Genoa- "two of the most exciting cities on earth."
Today whenever I witness theatre in its varied forms- be it traditional theatre, classical theatre or contemporary theatre- it's all about connecting with the audience through our shared heritage of stories and experiences.
"Your reaction to a text can be a play in itself," said Parnab Mukherjee later to me. "All conversation is theatre, but with a character it becomes a script." In that sense, life is art; and art life.
