The epic has always had relatable contemporary issues at its very core, say Jalabala and Anusuya Vaidya, who are adapting it. By Team Viva
After internationalising the Ramayana for 47 years, thespian Jalabala Vaidya is reinterpreting the epic for the younger audience and contemporising its context. The derivation of relevant issues in her late husband Gopal Sharman’s Ramayana has already laid the template. Empowering women and reflecting on the less talked about characters of the play, the adaptation focusses on the human aspect of the epic.
“Rama is maryada purushottam but a human nonetheless with doubts, insecurities and inhibitions. Sita is a strong willed character who fights off Ravana’s endless attempts at wooing her. In this play, Rama and Sita are shown as husband and wife who live separately for years and have been psychologically affected by the war and are unable to connect to each other as they feel no warmth in their relationship. Parallels are drawn between the governance in lanka and Ayodhya and the characters of Sita and Ravana’s wife Mandodhari who as a philoshophical lady has to deal with the fact that her husbandis infatuated by another woman,” says daughter Anasuya, who is helping her mother Jalabala in reinterpreting the epic for millennials.
“The character of Ravana is a highlight too. While everybody in the play is a human, Ravana is not a typical demon. His character is not black and white. He is passionate and glamorous and also seductive. The whole ethos of lanka as a city has been brought out. lanka and Ayodhya are compared thoroughly in terms of viewpoints. The depiction of what makes lanka successful and almost the centre of the world and Ravana’s philosophy in how he runs his kingdom as opposed to Rama’s or Dasharatha’s philosophy is a unique comparison,” adds she.
Jalabala Vaidya enacted 23 characters for the one-woman playRamayana adapted from the epic by Sharman in 1970 for a small audience in a space located above the porch of Ashok Hotel in New Delhi.
Ramayana, unmistakably is the magnum opus of Sharman’s genius and Jalabala breathed life into his adaptation that has lived a life of its own for forty seven years and counting. Over the years much has changed in the play’s storyline. As always it has the derivation of contemporary issues in it but the essence as Jalabala says has been the same throughout. “Ramayana as a story has been retold many times in many languages by many people. But the theme for us always stayed about the same three aspects: The effect of war, the relationship between man and woman and the principles of good governance,” says Jalabala.
Adding to mother’s views, Anusuya elaborates, “These issues are always contemporary. We talk about the good governance and Ram rajya even today. War still continues to tear families apart. looking at the Ramayana as a story of a man and woman separated by war and living with their own set of principles and duties is all that the play for us is about.”
Forty seven years later and after performing more than two thousand shows, sitting beside her daughter in the theatre her husband constructed with his own hands, Jalabala Vaidya recalls her theatre journey. “Dr Sarvepalli Radhkrishnan had invited us to read out Gopal’s works to him at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He loved it so much that he asked the Indian Council for Cultural Relations(ICCR) to schedule a public performance of this at the Azad Bhawan in Delhi. The only date they could offer us was a Friday the 13th because no one else wanted that date.”
Not counting on their luck, they took that date and performed and there has been no looking back ever since.
Now performed by a team of actors’ each playing a different role, Jalabala and Sharman’s original Ramayana continues to be performed at Akshara Theatre today whose construction was started by Sharman in 1972. “He made everything we have here. The chairs, the carvings in stone on the outside walls and even the wiring for the stage. He breathed his soul into his place and we live in his art everyday,” says Jalabala.
Anusuya fondly remembers her baapji’s zeal while constructing the theatre. “He was a problem solver. If anything was not perfect and to his liking he would redo it altogether. He wanted this theatre to reflect his and my mother’s work and ideology in the most perfect sense,” she tells us.
Talking about the legacy of her family from her parents to now her children Anusuya says,“Our vision has always been to give a voice and a stage to independent and budding directors, actors and any other artists who like to showcase their creations but cannot find an economical stage to use. We have stand-up comedians and spoken poetry poets here to display their art. We want this to be the place for free expression and thought and see art bloom in this theatre, the art of my parents and our family.”
Elucidating on her views for theatre today as compared to cinema, Anusuya says, “In cinema we often see things as good and bad; black and white and in two dimensions. Theatre is never like that. It is three-dimensional and dabbles in the grey between the good and the bad. It was smeared by getting labelled as propaganda in the 60s and 70s but theatre is not about politics. It is a discipline that takes years to attain and perfect. People today are getting gradually attracted to theatre as they see that this can be an alternative form of mental stimulation and expression.”
Apart from being a platform for artists, Akshara under the Vaidyas also organises theatre workshops for children and has been doing so for the past 19 years. These workshops are accompanied by plays for children. Sometimes adapting classic stories like Tagore’s The Cabuliwallah but more often working on fusing Indian stories with modern fairytales. Alice and Krishna in Wonderland, their ongoing production for children is one such example.
To carry this vision and ideology towards theatre they both work together in the theatre with various artist to guide and help them through the showcasing of their works. “This is a much needed platform for young artists but as we are situated in central delhi, this property is worth a lot of money.There have been attempts in encroaching it. We have fought many battles to retain this theatre and continue to fight even more everyday with just the dedication we have as a family towards this artform,” concludes Jalabala.