Thearticle published in the Times of India can be accessed online at
http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/index.aspx?eid=31807&dt=20150807 on page 6
or at
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/life-theatre-of-veenapani-stepping-out-of-the-known/articleshow/48384460.cms?from=mdr
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Stepping out of the known : The theatre of Veenapani Chawla
by M.D.Muthukumaraswamy
Veenapani
Chawla’s last play The Hare and the
Tortoise was the summation and pinnacle of her artistic works and the
spiritual quest guided by Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. In a theatrical
production of stunning visual imageries, jazzy music, non-linear narrative,
sparse dialogues, and multiple realities represented by the shadow puppets and
human bodies Veenapani Chawla explored Hamlet’s dilemma, ‘to be or not to be’.
The Aesop’s folktale of the slow moving tortoise winning the over confident
hare in a race becomes a metaphor for dealing with space and time. Veenapani Chawla
appropriately draws in her play parallels between the folktale and other
archetypal pairs of Ganapathi- Karthikeya, Arjuna- Eakalyva, Alice in reality- Alice
in wonderland, shadow- human body, and the modern man in the cut throat race
and the ever brooding, procrastinating Hamlet. What look familiar and even ludicrous
pop images soon assume the significance of a philosophical inquiry of the
predicament of the modern man without a soul. Very interestingly The Hare and the Tortoise makes a case
for stepping out of the familiar frame, going into the liminal zone, and
getting into the mode of Meta soliloquy to grasp the problems of the modern
man. The brooding Hamlet, played by Vinay Kumar, is disgusted with sex, food,
drink and his own shadow and wonders whether the answers are there in the
realms beyond knowledge. The playful Alice, played by Nimmy Raphel, assures him
that it is a mystery and what follows is a series of movement and music
explorations on the theme of getting out of the known frame.
The
delight and the charm of Veenapani Chawla’s plays emanate from her ways of
dethroning the supremacy of the word in theatre and reestablishing the primacy
of actor’s body as the artistic medium. Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of integral
yoga accords seminal importance to human body as the instrument of spiritual
quest and Veenpani says in a conversation with Leela Gandhi, “We know our
superficial personality which is made up of a body, mind, and emotions/ vital
being. But behind this, hidden from us, is what he Sri Aurobindo calls the
subliminal part, which is much vaster but not known to us. Our external
personality constantly receives influences, touches, communications from this part
but the external part does not know from where they are coming. Hidden behind
the subliminal is the psychic, the evolving part of us. One of the important
practices is to bring this part out in the open, to become conscious of it, to
let it direct the life. All I will say about the psychic here is that it is the
source of the finest creativity.” Translating this spiritual vision into an
artistic practice Veenapani wrote that the artistic principles of the Adishakti
Laboratory for Theatre Arts Research, a modern theatre company she founded near
Auroville, Puduchery, were to seek out the subtle interconnectedness between disparate
peoples, localities, knowledges.
She
further wrote, “Our work has been the consequence of dialogue between
traditional performances and contemporary performance; between theatre
practitioners and urban architects; between physics, philosophy and religions.;
between Dalit performers and Sanskrit pundits; between Vedic chanting, Koranic
chanting and Koodiyattam Vachika; between the needs of the contemporary actor’s
body and the resources of traditional medicine; between music and the language
of the stage; between music and Nada Yoga; between South Asian performance traditions
and histories, and East Asian performance traditions and histories.
Ardhanarishwara, the half-man, half-woman form of Siva, Ganapati, with his
animal head and human body, resonate with the idea of ‘mixed’ space and strange
marriages. It is with the creation and fostering of such paces that our
aesthetic concerns itself, and offers itself to the world”
While Veenapani’s plays Ganapati, Brhannala and The Hare and
the Tortoise stand testimony to her artistic vision of hybridity in the
postcolonial time, Shanta Gokhale in her edited volume, The Theatre of Veenapani Chawla Theory Practice Performance
chronicles Veenapani’s life as a constant search for the subliminal part of
Indian psyche which she found in Indian folk traditions. After successfully
directing Naseeruddin Shah in a new interpretation of Oedipus Veenpanai left the glamorous world of Mumbai theatre to
learn Chhau in Odisha, Kalaripayattu and Koodiyaatam in Kerala subsequently.
After settling down in Puduchery and founding Adishakti Veenapani constantly
hosted festivals, of Ramayana, shadow puppet theatre, Therukkoothu, Nagaiyar
Koothu, and Koodiyaattam. In her constant artistic explorations of Indian folk
traditions, Veenapani discovered the time-tested methods of breathing exercises
and their relations to human emotions and perfected them in actor training
methods. In a way like her characters in her plays, Veenpani constantly stepped
out of the known frames of knowledge and reality to articulate a unique
theatre, which is quintessentially Indian. In one of her characteristic stepping out of known frames of knowledge and
reality in November 2014 Veenapani Chwala left this world. What she has left
behind at Adishakti is not only an intriguing body of plays and performances,
but also unique method of actor training that connects one to the energy
resources in the body and the cultural resources in the mind. Adishakti actors
Aravind Rane, Vinay Kumar, Nimmy Raphel, and Suresh Kaliyath, and musicians
Pascal Siegar and Arjun Shankar are the finest in the world of Indian theatre
today.
