A mother makes her child squat in the open to defecate. She then cleans up the child at a water pump, where people are pumping drinking water. Along comes a man jauntily, steps on the poo and goes to the same pump to wash his foot. Trees are cut, and then people worry over the lack of rain. These are some of the scenes from Yosi, directed by Manorangz Venkat. Think of the consequences of what you do is the message.
And Yosi shows us what happens when the message is driven home. There is no indiscriminate felling of trees, and there are timely rains. One can take a stroll on clean streets, without fear of slipping on a discarded banana peel. And there is no danger of stepping on filth. In Yosi, the first of five short plays presented by Shraddha, a bunch of agile children (Manorangz team) gave these messages through a mimetic presentation, executing their moves with breezy precision. It was the physical comedy that was endearing, entertaining and meaningful.
Varugalaamo, directed and enacted by S.S. Kalairani captured Nandanar’s emotions, on his being denied entry into the Chidambaram temple. The rustic flavour in the singing and reciting of Gopalakrishna Bharati’s Varugalaamo was appealing. Kalairani as Nandanar showed a gamut of emotions, the variations in the tone of her voice matching the expressions. Nandanar cries one minute and pleads with Siva the next, but entreaty becoming anger, he demands that Siva should allow him into the temple. Although Kalairani’s expressions and voice modulation brought out Nandanar’s anguish, the monoact was too long. This resulted in repetitive renderings and tedium. Less is more is a dictum that theatre persons would do well to remember, and to overdo something is to detract from its overall appeal.
Theatre Zero’s Thathavin Petti, written and directed by Vinodini Vaidyanathan, was a short skit about a locked chest. What does it contain, and how is one to open it? A ghostologist is summoned to communicate with the dead and to get the numerical combination that will open the chest. But who is the dead one and who is alive? The ghostologist is in for a shock. Sprightly though the actors were, the play was juvenile, the sort of skit children stage in schools.
Outstanding performance
Jannal, based on Sundara Ramaswamy’s story of the same name and directed by N. Muthuswamy, had Anandaswami playing the role of a bedridden boy. And what an outstanding performance it was! The window is the boy’s only connection to the outside world. He discovers that there is a palette of colours even in a limited view, and that life, even in segmented portions can be interesting. He sees clouds scudding across the sky, and he is fascinated by their colours and shapes. Some clouds look like galloping horses; some like a banyan tree. He chuckles when the idea strikes him that the stout plantain tree in a neighbour’s house looks as prosperous as the lady who tends it.
The man perched precariously on top of a cart transporting hay, rain drops trickling down an overhead electricity cable, a little girl plucking a rose surreptitiously — everything is of interest to the boy as he lies in bed. When he is moved away from the window, it’s almost as if it is the end of the world, and he gives up the fantasy. It was a virtuoso display by Anandaswami. His ease and poise gave the play a charming conversational flavour.
A man quite low in the pecking order in a political party, can still give himself airs, as does the party worker (Krishnamurthy) in Thalaivar. He walks with a swagger and fancies himself the next big leader. He isn’t even kept in the loop when the leader of his party visits a place, but such rebuffs just bounce off his back as water off a duck’s back. The play is a take on political leaders, who talk nineteen to the dozen when they want votes, but forget their voters, once they have tasted power. But with voters getting savvy, it is no longer easy to fob them off with vague promises.
And so the leader in Thalaivar chooses to remain silent, fielding another to do the talking. It is possible that the person who leads a party may be a mere figurehead. This is shown symbolically through the leader of the party keeping his head covered, so that it seems as if a headless person is walking around. The children from Manorangz team were the unquestioning acolytes, who follow a political leader, giving him their cheers generously, even when he says nothing sagacious. Krishnamurthy and Swaminathan as the sign board artist sparkled as they exchanged home truths about politics.