'Dreams of Taleem', Sachin Kudalkar's play built around the late Chetan Datar's play 'Ek Madhavbagh' will have another performance on February 1st at Ravindra Natya Mandir at Prabhadevi.
Since the play deals very directly with gay issues, both in itself and in 'Ek Madhavbagh', the play's director, Sunil Shanbag has approached us to publicise this performance and also perhaps to help with group bookings. I'm certainly happy to help with publicising what I thought was an exceptionally interesting play, and we can do group bookings (or just go as a group) if people are interested. I should point out here that Dreams of Taleem has been discussed on GB before by Vivek Anand, and he did not have a positive view of it, both personally and as a friend of Chetan's. Here's a link to his mail, which please read so you get a different perspective on the play: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gaybombay/message/46587 My view was that the play was very ambitious, and perhaps tried to do too many things and was a bit confusing at times. But it had an excellent production from Sunil Shanbag and his team, the performances were heartfelt and that it was a really interesting and challenging production. And it confirmed my view that Sachin Kudalkar is one of the most fascinating young creative artists at the moment, whose work has to be seen. He is always trying something new, trying to extend his boundaries, while keeping a firm grip on the reality of how his characters live and feel. He may not always succeed and one may not always agree with him, but his work has to be seen. We've seen it with his short films like 'The Bath' and 'Dhruv & I' and his play 'Chottiyasha Suttit'. I haven't read his novel Cobalt Blue or seen his first film, but I saw his last film 'Gandha' which is three short films in one. Again its really interesting, though not gay themed. (To compensate, it has Milind Soman, looking GREAT, in one segment, but this is not the best segment). Dreams of Taleem is built around Ek Madhavbagh, and in the course of the play the whole of Ek Madhavbagh gets performed, though by different people rather than the monologue it was earlier. This can occasionally get confusing, and I was wondering how people who didn't know Ek Madhavbagh would deal with it (I have never seen it, but I've read the script), but I was with friends who had neither seen or read it, and once they got the idea - which Shanbag explains at the start -they were fine. But you can see how it can get confusing! Ek Madhavbagh is already a play where the actress breaks out of the 'script' to talk to the audience, and now you have another play built around that play, with the 'playwright' of Ek Madhavbagh - who isn't named as Chetan, though its not hard to see why he is taken as him - also part of this larger play, but not in person, just as emails read out by the performers. One could see this as confusing, but I found it exhilarating - this was a play which challenged you to keep up, and thanks to Shanbag's production, I think one could. Here, hopefully without giving away too much, is what happens. A young actor Yash is rehearsing Ek Madhavbagh, directed by his partner Aney. You get a lot about the relationship between the two and I think the actors did a good, if not great job. The roles require a lot of very open (but not erotic!) intimacy between the two, and I can see that must have been a challenge. Rehearsing leads to a dispute which (as often happens...) leads to intimacy when they are interrupted by a call. A famous actress, Sita, who hasn't acted for years, has heard they are doing this Ek Madhavbagh and is willing to act the role (its a monologue). So they drop what they are doing - meaning they don't drop their pants! - and run over to her place to meet her. And the first person they meet is not Sita, but her mother. Who's in a wheelchair and has got some combination of Alzheimer's and Tourette's because she has both lost her mind but gained a formidable knowledge of very colourful abuse, which she spews out at great length and passion (the play is nominally in Hindi-English-Marathi, but essentially the Marathi is the mother's abuses!) The mother adds energy to the play, but may seem a confusing figure. Yet I think she's not if you look at the play in another way - not about being gay (or not just that), but about being a mother. Ek Madhavbagh is a mother's monologue, the actress who delivers it reacts as a mother, the actress in the play that Aney wants to act Ek Madhavbagh speaks about her own ambiguous experience of motherhood, towards the end Aney has a long, anguished phonecall with his mother - and right through it all goes this potent image of the mad mother, to who Sita must take on a mother's role. This seems to me to be one layer in the play. Between Ek Madhavbagh and Dreams of Taleen, between the characters, there is a constant dialogue on what being a mother and being a child means. Being gay, of course, is another layer and this comes from Ek Madhavbagh and also from the problems Aney and Yash have in getting their families to accept their sexuality and their relationship with each other. Sita's problems in dealing with their sexuality - and how it affects her interpretation of her Ek Madhavbagh role - is also an issue, and this one with a happier conclusion. Sita does become a friend to Aney in the end, helping him deal with the problems his sexuality has caused him, including Yash's apparent abandonment of him. This apparent abandonment, when Yash is forced to go home, possibly to get married, leads to one of the oddest moments in the play, and perhaps the one that could have been dispensed with - though it has some compensations... This is a dream sequence where Yash, before leaving, calls two angels and asks them to take care of Aney when he is away. This sudden bit of magic realism is a bit odd, though it does establish the closeness between the couple. And the compensation is that the angels are played by two very cute shirtless guys! The last layer in the play was about the theatre world itself and the frustrations of doing plays, specifically Marathi plays. Aney is committed to the theatre, but knows that few others are. Sita was once committed to the theatre, but then left it, and now is returning for one last time, or is she? Through them we get a continuous conversation on the relevance, if any, of theatre, and what the theatre does to those who take part in it - and since this is in a play in itself, there's an automatically reflexive conversation going on. And here, finally, you have the unseen playwright, who has become a recluse, and only communicates through sardonic, knowing, cynical emails that are read out, yet one more commentary on the theatre. And this, I think, was perhaps the most controversial part of the play, though here one did have to know a bit about Chetan. This may not have been Sachin's intent, but plays are formed between playwright, director, performers and viewers too, and this is what I got from it. The details of Chetan's death have been discussed on other lists like lgbt-india, so I don't need to go into it, except to make this point -it may have been unncessary. Chetan chose not to take treatment that could have kept him alive, and the question is why? What I got from 'Dreams of Taleem' is the question of what drove him to this despair, making him a recluse like the playwright in the play? Were we responsible in any way? Was anyone? Could anything have reached out and convinced him? Or was it a choice that must be respected, bleak as it is? If these are the questions posed by 'Dreams of Taleem' - and I fully accept I am going out on a limb, and probably reading into the play something Sachin and Sunil Shanbag never intended - then there are no clear answers. In that sense I agree with Vivek that this is a bleak play. Yet in another way its not, because perhaps it suggests that if there are no easy solutions of automatic love from parents, from others, but there is also the strength we can find in ourselves. Yash and Aney deal with their demons and are reunited and find some friendship too from Sita, someone else who has dealt with her demons and come to an acceptance of herself. And for the viewers we will have had the experience of being challenged, forced to think, to question easy platitudes about love and acceptance, and perhaps to come to solutions of our own. Whether you agree with this or not, I think 'Dreams of Taleem' really needs to be seen, so please think of being with us on February 1st at Ravindra Natya Mandir. Mail me directly at vg...@yahoo.co.uk if you want a ticket booked for you. Vikram
