Of bonding and bondage
thehindu.com | Mar 4th 2011
'Anubandhyam', based on the life and works of French playwright Jean Genet,
raises questions about the established order in mainstream society.
The play ‘Anubandhyam' performed recently at School of Drama, Thrissur, delves
into the political and psychological terrains of male homosexuality. Based on
the life and works of French playwright Jean Genet, this play was directed by
Shibu S. Kottaram, the Head of Department of the school.
Unexplored theme
The play demands our attention for not only its theme, which is largely
unexplored in Malayalam theatre, but also for the fact that it challenges our
concept of sexuality. The author himself was an outlaw, sent to Reformatory
school at a young age, imprisoned all over Europe for theft as well as his
homosexual adventures. His curious philosophy of inverting societal moral codes
by placing evil and betrayal as virtues, describing the process of thieving as
a quasi-religious act has made him a proponent of the Theatre of Cruelty that
essentially looks to purge society of evil through violent acts on stage.
The performers mostly speak lines from Genet's ‘Deathwatch,' which centres on
three prisoners locked up in the same cell. Two of them, petty thieves, revere
Green-Eyes – the ‘master' criminal convicted for murder. They harbour a deep
and secret desire for Green-Eyes and want to attain his ‘status.' As the actors
use their bodies to create an intelligently choreographed visual, the play uses
a biographical text detailing the author's life and philosophy to the
accompaniment of drums as background score.
As the title indicates, the performance recreates the wretched conditions of
cattle bound together on their way to the slaughter house. Jostling against
each other in their struggle for space, the realisation of a common fate bonds
them together.
The dialectics surrounding the guard and the prisoners in the play are further
developed by borrowing from the theme of ‘The Balcony,' which is about role
reversals. This device is interestingly appropriated in ‘Anubandhyam,' opening
up the minds of the viewers to raise significant questions about the
established order and its outcasts.
Allegory
Here the solitude and misery of imprisonment is rather an allegory of the
feeling of confinement in mainstream society felt by people of different sexual
orientation. The guard is the representative of the established order that
keeps watch over these ‘deviant' people. His lines about friends and enemies
and his role reversal as the prisoner points to the ambiguity of these ‘roles'
while putting forth a critique of the moral high position assumed by mainstream
society.
The background narration mentioning how a woman feels about her body under the
male gaze juxtaposed with male homosexuals' visual enacted on stage foregrounds
the commonality of experience of both these peoples as the ‘Other' in
mainstream society.
The all-male cast of the play drawn from the first semester students of the
Bachelor of Theatre Arts, has performed with energy. The rough and stark
sceneography that consists of scaffolding with nets in an open space brings out
the misery and hopelessness of confinement-a situation both the condemned and
the guard share. The innovative music score that combines vocal narration with
the beats of the drum adds strength to the play. The director deserves to be
complimented for this well designed play that is charged with political
insight.
Keywords: Anubandhyam, Malayalam theatre
Original Page: http://www.thehindu.com/arts/theatre/article1506446.ece
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