The evening rush hour, coupled with diversions around Connaught Place made the traffic around me imitate the turgid bowel movements of a particularly constipated duck. However, whenever there was any opening, each individual vehicle seemed to transform into a spermatozoon, rushing to fertilise some imaginary egg, trying to push, shoulder and shove all other spermatozoa out of its way. And there I was, stuck in these alternating rhythms of crawl, careen and crush, wanting to reach Maya Rao’s performance on time. Behind me was this blaring bus with the blazing letters ‘Panic Kar’ (or was it Panicker?) somewhat prophetically painted on it.
Anyway, to cut a long journey and story short, I arrived at the venue (Abhimanch, Bahawalpur House) some twenty minutes or so late. I entered the hushed theatre to find the projection of a giant smoking cigarette rather obviously imitating the antics of a penis. Then came cut outs, episodes of ‘maleness’ under various circumstances, hands over fists. The show, to quote “ combined live sound, text, action, song and video come together to draw out, lay bare and reflect on the theme of masculinities and the many ways it lies embedded in our sense of identity, relationships, work and attitudes. Contemporary theatre artist, Maya Krishna Rao has created a series of episodes that have grown out of improvisations with multiplemedia artists Ashim Ghosh and Amitesh Grover. Episodes, some funny, some introspective, some disturbing and some pointing to the often unspoken and unexpressed…”
Frankly, while I found some of the improvisations to be a little simplistic, others were excellent. I think the combination of multimedia and traditional theatre was melded together seamlessly. Maya’s acting, voice and singing were great. I particularly liked the poignant episode where the man comes home to sleep on the ‘double bed’, but just does not possess the wherewithal to reach out emotionally or physically to the other person lying on it. That, believe me, is truly where manliness leads us- alienation. The setting for this sketch was also particularly interesting. While Maya as the ‘other person’ on the bed was projected on a film screen which began at floor level, Amitesh as the man stood on the other side of the screen in a manner that he seemed to be lying on the other side of the bed. Nice innovation, but at its core the appeal (at least to me) was that the awkward yet graceful movements of the duo, their holding together of a tragi-comedy seemed to be something straight out of Charlie Chaplin.
The ending was also (again in my eyes at least) Charlie Chaplinisque- tired man feet dancing inside boots and finally coming or liberating themselves out. It seemed to be a nice little reversal of the ‘iron hand behind the velvet glove.’
Maya Rao is a woman, but she got into her ‘manly’ role with great gusto.
