jabberwocky

old wounds that never heal.
outer skin covering
claws below the surface
tear it open
gnawing at the oozing core
cry in pain
cat, fish and angry owl come licking
The irrisistable smell of fresh blood
Cry , yell, scream... soundless, mindless yawns
but no sleep in sight.

Cover the wound ,
clean, cover, robed, cloaked, hidden.
the pain killed the first time; will the second coming elevate?

It's been such a good week.. i wonder when some crazy stuff will strike.
Othello went off superbly, decorated lobby, othello mugs(super smart idea) and the specials at the cafe were quite something.. the only flop was the book stall and the reading..and even that was okay.. it wasn't too bad.

Neat work.. will find a review or write one.. and not be lazy... missed Sheeba, she would have changed the dynamics of the play. che only.

the fun never ends at the black thunder?????

I don't want to go through the entire process of writing a review for Othello.. because Arshia has written a nice one.. I'll just post it here.. and feel good!!

OTHELLO – A PLAY IN BLACK AND WHITE

It would seem that it is the season of the Moor. While Omkara runs to packed houses in the city and elsewhere, thanks to Ranga Shankara and Magic Moments, Bangalore is treated to Roysten Abel’s production of the Othello tale that takes on race, class and gender. Three house-full shows at Ranga Shankara and the inevitably merchandised mug have left their mark on the city’s theatre-scape. As always, Ranga Shankara brought a little more to the party by surrounding the main performances with readings of Shakespeare’s works and an exhibition of photos.

Abel’s searing Othello has been around a while and has had many iterations, though the primary cast (Barry John, Adil Hussain, Dilip Shankar, Vivek Mansukhani and Abel himself) has remained the same. It won the Scotsman Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1999 and has gone from success to success wherever it has played across Europe as well as in India.

Despite the magical eloquence and assured craft of Abel’s Othello – A Play in Black and White one must mention other Othellos that this production recalls. Interpretations of the high emotional tenor of Othello through Kathakali have been numerous: Jayaraaj’s film Kaliyattam, and Sadanam Balakrishnan’s and Arjun Raina’s performances to name but a few. There is also George Cukor’s A Double Life, which won Ronald Colman an Oscar for his performance of an actor playing Othello whose heart and mind fall apart as his uncontrollable jealousy towards his former wife who is playing Desdemona takes over his life and his performance as the line between stage and life blurs dangerously.

Abel explores the dark demons at the heart of the Shakespearean classic – sexual jealousy, pride and honour and the delicate status of the outsider who rises to fame and power on the basis of talent and determination. His presentation is rooted firmly in the Indian context, situated squarely amongst our own conflicts of class and gender, centre and margin, language and authority. In Abel’s story (he wrote the play), a Delhi theatre group calls in an outside director to present Shakespeare’s Othello. The group reflects the sincerity of urban English theatre that tries to remain vibrant and relevant through experimentations with form and practice even as it stays rooted in the conventional theatrical canon. Even as the new director comes in and talks about presenting Othello with Kathakali elements, the group has retained the services of a dance teacher, a man from Assam who came to the National School of Drama and now sits on the edge of metropolitan stage, more comfortable in regional language theatre than in English. He is respectful to the point of being obsequious with the members of the group, intimidated by their sophistication and urbanity. And they, in their turn, treat him with disdain, acknowledging his talent, but not his person.

Things begin to unravel when the new director casts the dance teacher as Othello, hoping, no doubt, to layer the play further using the teacher’s real-life subaltern status as well as his immense talent. In a masterfully scripted Moebius strip, Abel has his actors play “themselves” as members of the theatre group, weaving personal histories and biographies into this already complex story about darkness in the heart. So we have the real Barry John playing a fictional “Barry” who is cast as Iago (to his bitter and eventually corrosive disappointment) and the real Adil Hussain playing “Adil the dance teacher,” the man from the margins (Assam) who went to NSD and came out of there a serious contender. In real life, John has been Hussain’s teacher and Hussain has studied Kathakali. Thus, the characters in the play are “themselves” presenting Shakespeare’s Othello directed by Abel as Abel.

In a parallel Moebius strip that presents another single, unbroken surface, Abel’s script of jealousy, insecurity and innocent virtue darts in and out of Shakespeare’s well-known narrative trajectory as the play hurtles from situational humour and sarcastic ironies towards its ghastly tragedy. Barry/Iago cannot abide the fact that his dance trainer has been chosen to play the role coveted by any actor, Adil/Othello is professionally talented but personally insecure, unsure of how to hold his own in the limelight into which he has been thrust, Kristen/Desdemona is a wide-eyed ingénue who has no idea of the passions she has unleashed through her innocent overtures to Adil and Dilip/Cassio. And watching all this with simmering anger and contempt is Vivek/Barbantio/Lodovico, intervening just enough to spark the embers of hatred, greed and lust among the others. Abel/Abel cannot believe that his crafty casting has brought his precious production to the brink of disaster as Adil/Othello has fallen madly in love with Kristen/Desdemona and cannot handle her relationships with the other male members of the cast, particularly with the unassuming and gentle Dilip/Cassio. Adil/Othello’s quiet dignity and calm confidence starts to crumble as his insecurities about himself as an actor, as a man worthy of the sophisticated and delicate Kristen/Desdemona and as an equal participant in the play turn him into a raging, inarticulate beast whose emotions leave him bereft of language and rob him of reason.

Quite apart from a superb script and magnificent performances from the entire cast (with Barry John as the undeniable centre, the powerful pivot around which the play and the other actors revolve), it is Abel’s confidence with his material makes this production an outstanding success. The audience enters the auditorium to find the actors performing basic dance exercises on a dimly lit stage. As the third bell goes, the actors turn around and break as the theatre group, with the dance teacher and the new director, ends practice for the day and prepares for auditions. A few black chairs and a humble platform are all that are needed to swing between rehearsal and real life as the play starts to move between the actors’ stories and the story of Othello, never missing a beat or a breath as the theatre group’s emotions and conflicts develop alongside Othello’s plot with alarming synchronicity. Within this incredibly tight timing, the actors together have created spaces of improvisation such that none of the three performances over this last weekend was the same. The wrenching catharsis at the end, however, was.

Adil Hussain’s highly strung performance was taut to the point of breaking as he moved literally from the margins of the stage to its centre. Barry John held that centre as his own with flawless control as an actor and as the character that manipulates all those around him. Dilip Shankar’s finely tuned portrayal of a man accidentally caught in the maelstrom of malice swirling around him is exquisite in its delicacy. Kristen Jain’s fragility and sweetness suit the part she was given to play (though one does wonder what a stronger actress might have done to the balance of male energies in the play) and Vivek Mansukhani’s edgy bitterness completes the fraught group with élan. Nevertheless, the play could have been a little shorter for its terrifying climax to fully explode, shocking the audience out of the performance and into reality.

Arshia sattar

August 15, 2006