Hard Times uses Hindi songs and light music to bring Charles Dickens’ novel on stage. I Sankrityayan reports
It started with a song revealing the flaws of the industrial revolution, took a humorous flight somewhere in the middle and ended on a sorry note of realisation of the truth. The latest production of Khilona, Hard Times, by director Kiran Deep, based on Charles Dickens’ novel, was a brave innovation with the message intact.
“Theatre is a much more effective medium. Here you can see, hear and experience the play almost like you experience life together with your family and friends. Of course, it is much shorter than the novel but we retained the essence of the novel and almost every important aspect to maintain the flow of the story with suspense etc,” said the director.
The action took place in three phases — sowing ideas, reaping logic and garnering compassion from suffering and pain. The story revolves around an imaginary place, Coketown, a northern industrial city. What is noteworthy is Deep’s painstaking effort in creating the town through sheer lighting and props. She elaborated, “It took us nearly three months to improvise the scenes. And our first run-through was for about three hours! Then we started editing and retaining the most essential elements, and brought it to about 150 minutes. A few trial shows in schools helped us tighten it up a little more and we were able to bring down the length of the play to less than 120 minutes. I am sure a few more shows will bring it down to 100 minutes, without any further editing.”
The play tells the story of a teacher, Gradgrind, who always emphasises on the relevance of facts in life and his follower, Bounderby, who works on the same concept in his factory, treating his labourers as emotionless objects whom he exploits for self-interest. Even Gradgrind’s children, louisa and Tom, are forced to lead their lives on the same principles, making them dull and monotonous. It deeply analyses the theory of rationalisation and how at last it results in wretchedness of the soul and by extension, society. In a very subtle way, the director allowed the characters to turn into machines without any compassion and attachment for one another and then made them realise the need for balance between logic and feeling
As Kiran shared, “Today’s conditions are quite similar. Materialism brought in by the Industrial Revolution has reached its pinnacle everywhere, and more so in India where personal gain, by hook or by crook, has become the primary goal of achievement, particularly businessmen. Competition is cut-throat and corruption is rampant at every level. Affluent business houses control most of the nation’s wealth while a majority continues to struggle for basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. No wonder, emotion and compassion has absolutely no place in education and imagination is used only for beating rivals. Primary purpose of education remains the same as it was then.”
The play was funnily edgy and left the audience spellbound by the audacity of debate. “In this novel Dickens emphasises the importance of two things, which were echoed by Einstein around 50 years later. One: Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. Second and most important thing he emphasises is that the Intuitive Mind is a sacred gift and the Rational Mind is a Faithful Servant. Unfortunately, we have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. So, all Dickens wants is a balanced use of the rational and the intuitive minds. Not just the logic and reason, but also emotion, compassion and imagination. This is what we understood from the play and we have tried to focus on that,” she explains.
So while in one instant the play turned lyrical, in the next instant it turned dark and real. Deep said, “When I read the novel about four years ago, I found it so relevant that I decidedto stage it. No wonder I read and re-read the novel many times to understand it myself and thought of ways to make it so simple that even a child can understand. So I used the Hindi compositions and light music. We had a mix of trained and experienced, professional, semi-professional and amateur actors. Since most of them worked for nearly three months, each one tried to give their best, and that is important for me as a director. While designing costumes for the play, I tried to incorporate a glimpse of the period where the play is set, that is, 19th century England with a mix of contemporary universality.”