Narkalikarar at AFA

Alliance Francaise of Madras and Koothu-p-pattarai Trust present 'Narkalikarar ', a play in Tamil by Na Muthuswamy directed by Professor S Ramanujam, at Alliance Francaise Auditorium in Chennai, on 30th and 31st March at 1900 hrs.

KOOTHU-P-PAT TARAI

• Koothu-p-pattarai has been staging contemporary plays in tamil for the past 27 years. . It is the only full-time Tamil theatre repertory in Tamil Nadu.

• To its credit, it has over 60 major theatre productions, 500 stagings, and 75 collaborative workshops with the best theatre talent from all over the world.

• Koothu-p-pattarai is one of five theatre groups recognized worldwide under the UNESCO-ASCHBERG bursary programme.

• Koothu-p-pattarai is now a nodal research centre for performing arts in South India.

NARKAL IKARAR

A man sits in a chair, uninvolved with the activity around him. Another man watches two groups of people with keen interest; one group plays poker and the other, marbles. The spectator starts kindling the imagination of the players, instigating differences. To keep the interest high, he creates hierarchies and groupism. To clash and to have winners and losers, he says, is true play. He structures their game around the well-known story of the crow that drops pebbles in a jar of water to raise its level. Finally, when just one more pebble is necessary to bring the water to the brim, they draw in the uninvolved man sitting in the chair. Forced to choose, he prefers the marble-playing group, thus revealing his likes and dislikes. The instigating spectator runs away as the players assault the voter, the man in the chair.

Director's Note:

The satirical tone of Muthuswamy's NARKALIKARAR on the absurdities of social phenomena had been presented by me, in an earlier production with Koothu-p-pattarai, as a process of children's. game-making. Now, after 17 years, finding the relevance of the tone and spirit of NARKALlKARAR in its profundity, I have designed it as a process of child-like game-making in the hands of the so-called experienced elders. Protective ring mastering, unsecured freedom, obsessive tradition and democratic rights are the realms to be put to self-interrogation. Social satire is not ridiculing somebody else, but a retrospective self-scrutiny.

The costume, make-up and other techniques reflect a sportive attitude with a tinge of fantasy; designed to foster objective observation from the audience.

NA MUTHU SWAMY

In 2001, Na. Muthuswamy received the Sangeet Natak Academy award. He is Tamil Nadu's leading playwright.

Na Muthuswamy is recognised as the leading pioneer in experimental Tamil theatre. In 1969 his production entitled "Kaalam Kaalamaaga" (From time immemorial) was hailed as the first modern play in Tamil stage history. He is a prolific writer with 10 plays, a collection of essays and a collection of short stories to his credit.

Born in Punjai, a village in Tami1 Nadu, he moved to Chennai in the late 1950s seeking work. It was here that the corrupting forces of urban life compelled him to reflect on the relatively innocent and genuine nature of village life and customs. In the late 1960s, he started writing for the stage, revealing his penchant for creating poetic and highly dramatic 'pictures'. In 1977 he founded his own theatre group, Koothu-p-pattarai, to stage experimental and innovative plays.

PLAYWRIGHT'S NOTE

When I wrote "Kaalam Kaalamaga", the one before "Narkalikarar", for the magazine 'Nadai', I knew nothing about theatre. Si Su. Sellappa had motivated an urge in me, to create a theatre movement in Tamil. Experiences from watching modem dance was what I had, when I agreed to write a play for our magazine 'Nadai', sitting on the steps of the Cauvery at Bhavani where the rivers Cauvery and Bhavani merge. I had read a few translations of Malayalam plays and the American playwright William Saroyan's 'Hello who's there?' in the 'Yezhuthu' magazine. But the urge to write a play was pretty strong in my mind. At another bank of the river Cauvery, our village, Punjai, sitting on our 'Thinnai' at our courtyard, with my best friend, Ramanujam's brother-in-law Kandaswamy, who was a school teacher, I finished writing the play 'Kaalam Kaalamaga'.

When it appeared in the first issue of 'Nadai', it met with great appreciation from all quarters. My friend, Ki. Aa. Satchithanandam told me that it was like absurd plays, resembling the plays of Eugine Ionesco. Immediately I picked up a few of Eugine Ionesco's plays and read them. My mind got freed in a big way. The form in modern dance, the freedom of language rendered by the new poetry movement in Tamil and the movements that nature had established in me, a village person, made it easy for me to write plays. While writing my first three plays, I had not witnessed Theru-K-Koothu.

Now when I sit and watch Prof. Ramanujam directing 'Narkalikarar', I feel happy at the way I have written 'Narkalikarar'. Though I had seen many Tamil plays before I began writing plays, I never liked the narration adopted by them. Only after writing my first three plays did I get to see Theru-K-Koothu, which has an influence on me.

CAST AND CREDIT LIST

  CONTACT INFORMATION
For any information regarding the play, please contact: Koothu-p-pattarai Trust
Old no. 58, 3rd Main Rd
Sri Ayappa Nagar
Chennai 600 092
Ph: 24796940
E-mail: kpp@vsnl.com

RR

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Published on 1^st April, 2004