Director Choiti Ghosh uses puppets, shadows and objects in unique ways to present her Alice in Wonderland, a play packed with metaphors. By Utpal K Banerjee
Geniuses are generally reputed to be a little touched by the moon! Virtuoso mathematicians, in particular, are known for their flights of fancy in their chosen fields of diversion. Way back in 1862, Reverend Charles ludwig Dodgson, a reputed professor of Mathematics in Christchurch College of Cambridge University, happened to take his colleague Vice-Chancellor’s three daughters — lorina (13), Alice (10) and Edith (8) — out on a long boat-trip via the Thames, when he spun out to them the fantastic tale of a little girl who fell through a rabbit-hole and met many quirky creatures in her bizarre adventure in the underworld. At the exhortation of the middle sibling, the story was soon put on paper as authored by “lewis Carroll” and, when published in 1865, caught everybody’s imagination. Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland and its sequel, Through the looking Glass, have remained a perennial favourite of children and adults alike, ever since.
Alice in Wonderland, presented by Tram Theatre from Mumbai, is billed to be “told with objects, puppets, shadows, music and actors.” Under the baton of the young theatre-person Choiti Ghosh — trained in Object Theatre in France and pursuing her form in Mumbai and elsewhere — the play has every day bric-a-brac strewn on the stage, which comes to life either as object-puppets on stage or as shadow puppets behind the screen. Their manipulation is by two female and two male performers who remain visible to audience all the time — resembling the black-clad Japanese Bunraku puppeteers.
like all puppet-plays, the show creates its own magic moments. The free fall of Alice comes alive with a hand-held doll-head pulled down under inverted torch-light. The crying Alice sheds copious tears: with another actor pumping water from two balloons atop her head! Cheshire cat takes shape brilliantly from clanking metal utensils held in place by different actors. In a very colourful presentation, such moments should keep recurring, to convey puppetry’s inherent magic all through! Characters and events from the lewis Carroll classic are only glimpsed otherwise: with plenty of modern gadgetry popping up all the time spectators had to look for touches from the endearing original.
The director has a stout defence about this. Says she, “When I take up a text, I don’t seek to interpret it verbatim. My way is to read it through and through, to catch its essential spirit. When I read Alice in Wonderland first, I was fascinated like everyone else. But when I wanted to perform it, I was keen to get to its core! To my mind, Alice’s fall in the rabbit-hole mirrors this spirit: she is getting away from the real world and coming face-to-face to another reality, another world altogether: of whims and wonders! The airplane that I use, for instance, is not there in the original, but to me it gives you an idea of immense height to which Alice has grown! Alice’s free fall is the quintessential metaphor, around which I have built my presentation.”
To the question as to why the music, lyrics, the entire arrangement are so urban-oriented, responds Choiti, “I concede they are Westernised. But this was intentionally not so. When we were building up the production, we improvised on bits and pieces, and the present structure emerged almost by default. We agree we should Indianise it more in future.”
Three experts present during the show offer their reactions. Says Anurupa Roy, heading Delhi’s puppet-group Kat-Katha, “This is Choiti’s third performance of Object Theatre I have seen. I think she has visibly grown, innovating on many fronts.” Sanjana Kapoor, who runs Shashi Kapoor’s Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, broadly agrees, “I believe she has added new dimensions to a basically skeletal form, which is very interesting.” Ranjana Pande, chief of Jan Madhyam, differs, however, “Choiti’s production should have more pauses and silences. It does have many possibilities yet unrealised. I’d treat it only as work-in-progress.”