The name of Motley primes us to expect an experience above the ordinary. So it was with A Walk In The Woods, an adaptation of a 1988 play by Lee Blessing. The original is about two arms negotiators, one Russian and one American, who develop a friendship of sorts during a year of peace talks in Switzerland. Motley’s version makes it about two diplomats, one Pakistani and one Indian, in the same spot – both geographically and figuratively.

The personalities of the two protagonists is a study in contrast. The Pakistani diplomat Jamal (played by Naseeruddin Shah) is flippant and flamboyant. He is a glib talker, switches effortlessly between Urdu-Punjabi and English, frequently drifts into off-topic asides. The Indian counterpart Ram Chinappa (played by Rajit Kapur) is staid, guarded and would rather not waste his time and his nation’s money discussing non-essentials with the Pakistani diplomat. He speaks warily in measured monosyllables, keeps his hands and legs crossed, does not once crack a smile. "We are not friends" is his curt rejoinder to the Pakistani diplomat’s attempts at building a bond.

Jamal is the more experienced of the two, and the one to lead and steer the conversations. We learn gradually that Jamal’s surface casualness masks an inner cynicism, and that Ram Chinappa is not the hard nut he makes himself out to be. Inspite of himself, and without quite meaning to, Ram warms up to Jamal over the course of the play. He does not go so far as to invite a pet name for himself (Jamal had tentatively offered to "Ramu" him at the outset, a suggestion that Ram had promptly declined), but by the time the play closes, Ram can no longer earnestly claim an absence of friendship.

This change comes about over a series of meetings that take place between the two in the woods in Geneva. Seasons shift as time passes – we sense the rains and chill in the actors’ clothes and body language. The audience never sees the men at the negotiating table: for us they are always in the woods, away from the prying eyes of the reporters whom they keep planning to hoodwink, like schoolboys one-upping their hostel warden.  Their relationship progresses from stonewalling of overtures, to sharing gajak from Delhi and debating on the merits (or not) of the topic of brown suits, to a near-tussi na jao goodbye.

This isn’t the play for you if you are looking for a What-Happens-Next-Will-Blow-Your-Mind. A Walk In The Woods is largely undramatic and uneventful. There are big things at stake, but they remain in the shadows. There is humour, but not the laugh out loud kind. The setup can only work with actors who are masters at the game. Motley’s performance gets that pitch-perfect. Each inflection of voice, movement of limb, makes the two characters come alive and keeps us invested in the proceedings on stage.

Throughout the play, the point of contention is a proposal being negotiated between India and Pakistan. We hear impassioned avowals of clause number so-and-so in the proposal, of checks and safeguards, words being redlined or subtly tweaked – but we never learn WHAT the proposal is. This play isn’t going anywhere near fleshed-out discourse on Indo-Pak conflict: A Walk In The Woods keeps its focus on the human connection between these two men, what’s happening between their nations remains firmly fuzzy. In fact, when the characters do get into political musings, the passages come across as simplistic – it’s just as well the play did not delve deeper there.

I went back and read Lee Blessing’s original after watching the performance, and it was fun to play spot-the-difference. The Russian negotiator is the Pakistani diplomat here, and the line about "No one speaks technical Russian. It is like saying I speak Algebra" works well when the language referred to is Urdu instead. Some of the best dialogues – the delicious quotable "Formality is simply anger with its hair combed" – are straight from the source. Pop culture references like Mickey Mouse and cowboys have been swapped with Bollywood and the like. Willie Nelson becomes Hemant Kumar!

The connotation may have been unintended, but I did marvel at the choice of parting gift: a tie, which is also a no-win situation. Not just any tie, but an orange one – the color that lies between Go and Stop.

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You know these words. They come up in your conversations. They accost you in print. They form a well-used part of your active vocabulary.

And yet, do you really know these old familiars as well as you think you do?

For these ordinary words have a theatrical side, one they reveal only to the keen.

1. Cheating

Cheating is not always a vile act; in theatre, it can be a gesture of inclusion.

Sometimes actors on stage must talk to each other naturally while, at the same time, not alienate the audience by turning their backs on them. They handle this two-pronged demand with the practice of "cheating" – i.e. keeping the head facing the stage partner but turning the body towards the viewers.

Cheating helps the audience improve the sightline and connect better with the performance. Here’s a video example of theatrical cheating in Evam’s Five Point Someone – a play that coincidentally also deals with exam cheating.

2. Kitchen Sink

The humble plumbing fixture lends its name to a style of theatre: one that focuses on the dreary realism of working-class life.

The term first came to be applied to John Osborne’s 1956 play Look Back in Anger, considered a flagbearer of kitchen sink drama.

English painter John Bratby is credited with inspiring the coinage of this term: in 1954, art critic David Sylvester wrote an article about trends in art calling it The Kitchen Sink, in reference to Bratby’s painting featuring the apparatus in question. And the term stuck.

[Wikipedia tells me Bratby also made three paintings of toilets; thankfully those did not lead to any theatre genre labels.]

3. Apron

While on the topic of kitchen references, here’s another one.

Apron. The part of a stage that protrudes in front of the curtain. On most stages, the apron is curved slightly outward beyond the proscenium arch, extending into the seating area.

The apron is typically used by the theatre crew while the curtain’s down to introduce or conclude the play, or to share asides during scene changes.

4. Fourth Wall

The fourth wall isn’t just what your bookshelf rests against.

The term is used to describe the imaginary "wall" that separates the stage from the audience. While the audience can see through the fourth wall to watch the performance, the actors behave as if they cannot.

When actors talk with the audience during the performance or walk on/off the stage, they are said to be "breaking the fourth wall" – for example, Mullah Nasruddin inviting viewers to the stage for role-play, or the lawyer from Silence! The Court Is In Session walking up to women in the audience to deliver his condemnatory speech.

5. Strike

Strike = hartal of course, but in the context of theatre, it also means "to remove something from the stage, such as a prop, scenic element or piece of costume".

At the end of the show’s run, the production team strikes the entire set – i.e. disassembles it to clear the stage for the next show.

In some performances (Rage Theatre’s Love Letters and Just Theatre’s Hedda Gabler come to mind), the actors strike the props while the play is in progress.

TDF’s Theatre Dictionary has a slick video about this meaning of "strike":

6. Corpse

Forgive the morbid imagery – this word is actually fun when applied to drama.

In British theatre slang, to "corpse" is for an actor to have an unscripted giggling fit on stage.

Why "corpse"? Probably because the most inopportune time to giggle is when one is playing the part of a corpse.

In theory, corpsing sounds like a strict theatre no-no, and yet when it happens, it has been known to thrill and delight the audience. So says the Guardian theatre blog:

when an actor bursts out laughing in a scene, the audience usually responds in kind; the laughter tends to be gentle and accommodating rather than harsh. […] I don’t know precisely why laughing at the wrong moments in life should be rewarded with so little sympathy and laughing at the wrong moments onstage should generate so much. In part, I think such breaks in character remind us of the transformative work an actor has to do to ease into his or her role.

7. No

Mr. Bachchan, in the film Pink, gave us an expansive discourse on the word "No".

He did not tell us one thing, though.

"No" is also a form of traditional Japanese drama.

The name comes from the Sino-Japanese word nō, meaning "talent" or "skill". No performances rely on iconic masks and stylized gestures to narrate tales from traditional literature.

[The word is also spelled "Noh", but there’s an obvious partiality for the shorter variant in some circles – I’m thinking of crossword setters who write clues such as this: One so thick-skinned audibly mocking foreign drama (5)]

The post 7 Everyday Words With Lesser-Known Theatrical Meanings appeared first on DramaDose.

When you hear of a children’s play titled Mullah Nasruddin, you imagine an enactment of stories featuring the mythical Mullah. Centuries-old, widely-circulated stories, familiar like old friends. You expect from the show some midly amusing folksy drama that would, if things go well, entertain you without surprising you.

Let the “2.0” in the title serve as warning. Ranga Shankara’s Mullah Nasruddin 2.0 is not that play.

Mullah Nasruddin 2.0 is a metaplay if you will: a farce about what happens when the cast for the *actual* play based on Mullah Nasruddin does not turn up due to a mix-up of dates. Instead of sending SOSes to the cast like regular people would do in the situation, the team here – makeup man, lighting assistant, etc. – decide to take on these roles themselves.

The result is zany with laughs all the way – and not just for the little ones. The “fake” actors purpotedly discover, to their horror, that a farmer in the “actual” play is supposed to have mastered the Arabic tongue. His humble impostor mimics the accent by mispronouncing “chicken” – this tic made an impression so powerful that dinner post-show with chicken in it had me almost calling it “chikun”. I bet the children who watched along will follow the farmer’s pronunciation too for a while.

In the chaotic play-within-play, nothing is sorted, not even who will perform the titular role of Mullah Nasruddin. At one point, the female director gamely dons his beard and begins dispensing sage wisdom.

The “fake” cast was excellent with engaging the audience. There was light-hearted Q&A, on-stage invitation, creativity in delivering messages that may have been too complex for the very young. Stock tales such as The Banquet, when included, were retold with freshness and contemporary puns. Special mention for this one actor (the makeup man) who didn’t even have to make any puns to make people laugh – he had a cackle so infectious, he only had to unleash one and the audience would join in without further prompting.

Notes:

• The mention of metaplay reminds me of another from a few years ago – Dreams Of Taleem.
• My co-author Kishore points out that Ranga Shankara hosts another play called The Incredible Mullah Nasruddin (link) with the same ticket format but another director and a different take on the topic. Which begs the question: was the gimmick of missing actors make-believe or real? Are we living in Inception?
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  

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Beloved collection of tales in rhyme
To be read on stage by actors sublime —
The prospect had me in eager wait:
I imagined nothing short of great.

Unlike Seth’s tales that end mostly grim
With hopes thwarted (or at least made dim)
My story goes well, I’m happy to report
What I anticipated is what I got.

Four players, decked in red blue green and yellow
Lent voice to yarns rather far from mellow
"Beastly" is so apt a word
For these wily tales of animal and bird.

At the outset, the cast set out to regale
Us with The Frog and The Nightingale
We knew we’re in for a stretch of fun
When Naseer croaked a batrachoidal "awn".

With winning wordplay to bolster it
This rhyming fable full of wit
Cautioned us, besides delighting,
Of the evils of gaslighting.

[The crossword setter accompanying me
Made special note of the parody
In the "Owl" Of Sandwich and, to boot,
Of Monte Cristo – the "Coot".]

The scene soon shifted to Mosquito and Louse
In which Ratna P Shah rocked the house
Her vocal skills – pretty awesome –
Made the louse lisp, the mosquito hum.

[Must add: she has a remarkable flair
For sneering smile and icy glare
Of which we saw an unscripted demonstrance
When a phone ring interrupted her performance.]

Thurber’s tales, straight prose and terse
Complemented Seth’s metered verse
Droll, satirical and, by design,
They trail off with a moral punchline.

Filling the whole post-interval span
Was Seth’s The Elephant and the Tragopan
A socio-political eco poem as finale
Set in mythical Bingle Valley.

Of the dramatization, I was keen to see
The handling of enjambment in Seth’s poetry
Since, when meanings overrun the words that rhyme,
The pauses must pay special heed to time.

On this count, how did the cast fare?
With great dexterity, I declare.
And even when long twisted lines were read
One could sense no shortness of breath.

—

Beastly Tales is tagged a Children’s Show
Is this okay? I do not know
I’d hazard the sombre themes and gore
Qualifies it for audiences more mature.

The angry speeches are not "kid-friendly" nice,
In every other tale someone horribly dies.
The hare’s passing in The Eagle & the Beetle ^[1]
Made even me shudder more than a leetle.

—

If this rhyming business is too much by far
For you, here’s a TL;DR
A five-word review, straight and pithy:
"Time well spent at Jagriti."

Footnotes:

^[1] I replicate here the passage in question
So you can make your own decision
On whether your young ones may be addressed
With readings of this style of text.

"You puny, servile, cloddish bug-
Go off and hide your ugly mug.
How do you dare assume the right
To meddle with my appetite?
This hare’s my snack. Have you not heard
I am the great god Zeus’s bird?
Nothing can harm me, least of all
A slow, pathetic, droning ball.
Here keep your friend’s head-" And she tore
The hare’s head off, and swiftly bore
His bleeding torso to her nest,
Ripped off his tail, and ate the rest.

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The play opens in a book-lined study, two actors on stage: a pompous, high-strung male professor and a dishevelled, timid-looking female student. The student is worried about her low grades and that the professor’s book she’s reading as part of the course does not make sense to her. The professor treats her in an offhand, condescending way – with a Hugh Grantish stutter and barely-restrained impatience, he sometimes expresses empathy, sometimes snaps. The student takes it all in a consistently cowering way, writing notes throughout. The professor has two threads of conversations going on – one with the student, the other on the desk phone (1992 play, no texting to fall back on) that regularly interrupts and reveals – to the student as well as to the audience – details of the professor’s life outside the scene.

Their dialogue is replete with halting sentences running into each other, cutting each other off. It feels raw and real, as if we are eavesdropping on an actual conversation. After a while of this, I thought – okay, fine acting on display with interesting back-and-forth about higher education, but what is the point of it all? The material seemed too meh to justify its existence as a full-length play.

And then we find that the initial blandness was a setup.

What follows after intermission puts an entirely different spin on what has transpired on stage so far. Those notes become ominous. The language of the characters – both verbal and non-verbal – transforms.

Oleanna is an effective paradigm…er, model…for the philosophy "you see what you are". Words and gestures can be perceived in vastly different ways, more so when filtered through the prism of power divide. The play makes you think about the delicate line between friendliness and sexual harassment, and the politics of power. Was the professor blameless, thoughtless, or wilfully guilty? Was the student reading it all wrong, taking too harsh a stance for small misdeeds, or totally right? Would the story have progressed differently if her tearful confession in Act One had not been cut short, or if she had not joined the mysterious "Group" which seems to be masterminding the later proceedings? Is the demand for book-banning a rational one as punishment for harassment? The play does not spell these details out, nor does it take sides. There is no character to root for – both the professor and the student are pretty unlikeable people. The professor is so peevish that even his "I love you" to the wife sounds like "the price of scrap metal has gone up". The student changes from mousy to monstrous; neither avatar does her favours – her gloating over the professor’s predicament is positively distasteful.

The student has a meaty Seeta aur Geeta-style role to play, though the double here is the same person with two temperaments. The actor gives quite a performance – breakdown scene, sneers and eyerolls, closing line – all well done.

Oleanna is not a pleasant play. It is tense and claustrophobic. The entire action happens in a stifling room: quitting this room is never easy. Act One ends with an exit abrupt and mistimed – a character about to tell a secret has to pause and leave (we never learn what the secret was). In Act Two, a character wants to quit but is forcibly stopped. In Act Three, a character is asked to leave the room, the request is contemptuously ignored.

The small, intimate space of Jagriti theatre adds to the aura of the play. It might not have worked as well on a larger stage.

I came out the theatre discomforted – and that’s a compliment.

Why is it called Oleanna?

One of the big questions on my mind during the play was: who is Oleanna? The student is Carol. The wife is Grace. Why then is the play titled Oleanna?

I looked it up online, and now learn that:

The play’s title, taken from a folk song, refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia.

…which doesn’t help much. How does an "escapist vision of utopia" connect with the content of this play?

Here’s some analysis from the blog How Books Got Their Titles: Oleanna by David Mamet.

The post Review: Oleanna [Jagriti, Bangalore] appeared first on DramaDose.

The star attraction of Prambanan is the Ramayana ballet, performed open-air* at night with the richly lit temples in its backdrop.

Note the asterisk against “open-air”? The catch is “outside of the rainy season”. The open-air performance happens usually between May to October. In the other months, the performance is held in an indoor theatre – a proviso I was unaware of when I travelled to Yogyakarta in November 2015.

And so, finding myself in an enclosed space to watch the show after being primed for an open-air extravaganza was a sore disappointment. Ramayan ballet minus the view of Prambanan was like an art piece shorn of identity – what would you think of Monet minus water lilies?

That feeling’s no reflection on the performance though, which was consistently good. Stylized, nimble choreography, making fine use of stage space.

Sita’s Swayamvar

The show is called a “ballet” but expect no tutus – this is a classical Javanese performance (wayang wong) with colourful ethnic costumes, traditional music, dance and mime.

Prambanan’s Ramayana is an enactment of the Kakawin Ramayana – those familiar with the Indian original can play a fun game of spot-the-difference between the two versions.

Screens on the sides display subtitles in Indonesian and English. As with the Korean play The Tale of Haruk, the subtitling here is terse, plus it takes a bit of head-maneuvering to read. You will follow the show better if you know its plot beforehand. English-conversant viewers are also advised to set aside their Grammar Stickler hats while watching the show.

Some of the combat scenes have been adapted for comic effect – the Lakshmana-Maricha duel in particular had the audience in splits.

If your interest lies in watching the action at close range, then the enclosed venue might work for you. In the outdoor shows I’m told, the performance is far removed from the audience. The indoor show is on a thrust stage at the same elevation as the front row of the audience, the performers only a few feet away.

Rawana seeking alms in disguise; Dewi Shinta in a bind inside the Lakshman Rekha

The tickets have differential pricing based on the seat location. In the open air show, getting the best seats matters. I had got the First Class ticket as the Special Class tickets were sold out. This turned out to be a lucky saving. In the enclosed theatre, the view was much the same from any seat – the “Special” indoor seats aren’t worth the steep price difference.

If I get to Yogyakarta ever again, I hope it is on a beautiful weather day with the Ramayana ballet happening outdoors. I will watch it again.

[For details of the outdoor ballet, see Discover Your Indonesia.]

Bonus pic of Prambanan before sunset:

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