It is the story of a town, a town 2,000 years old, reeling under the weight of an illustrious, yet sad past. Illustrious, for it was once a thriving carnival town known all over for its extraordinarily gifted performers; sad, for it earned the wrath of the gods for their hubris. While it?s a tale of their redemption and how they regain faith in themselves, ?this village of the arts? also serves as the backdrop of an allegorical tale of creative death. But it?s not about the end, but scraping new beginnings, the will to survive, to sustain, to live and to carry on.
Conceived and directed by Roysten Abel for the National School of Drama Repertory Company, Old Town explores the worst fears of an artiste, delves into a barren mind, and takes you on an emotional and spiritual journey that will at once drain you and rejuvenate your state of being. At one level, this play could be described as a fecund creation out of ?a state of nothingness? and, at another level, it could be read as an indispensable outcome to revive an artiste?s creative senses, meaning: to survive. Says Roysten Abel, ?There comes a point in an artiste?s life where all his resources dry up, he lives in a barren land, where no idea germinates and there is nothing more frightening than that.?
Perhaps one of the chief predicaments in wrestling with the personality of a creative individual lies in the fact that, like the moon that waxes and wanes, he is also a seasonal phenomenon. For Abel, whose previous production Manganiyar Seduction?a unique confluence of traditional Rajasthani music and striking theatre design?took the world by storm, it drained him of his creative energies, leaving him to a lonesome fight with the ?demon of nothingness?. Now after six years, grappling with his ?fear of nothingness and a fear of failure?, he faces his demons head on, channels his ?carnival of emotions? to Old Town, healing himself in the process. A creativity, endless yet finite and circular in its perfection.
Performed at the National School of Drama lawns, it was a space where the entire range of the town?s cultural expression and diversity emerged. The sprawling stage was the backdrop of a leela, a dance of creative energy. Set in a carnival mode with brightly-lit ferris wheels, a puppet show regaling the audience with the tale of Amar Singh Rathore, a nautanki about the sexual desires of a young queen married to an old king and a titillating dance routine to the Bollywood number Chikni Chameli, the play is speckled with layered narratives. And even the performance stage is layered, if one may say so. The physical use of space for the performance also makes it highly interactive for the audience.
The play begins with an introduction to a hypothetical town ?Machaaland?, which grew organically out of a rich culture of creativity. The story goes back to the time when the performers blinded by their success and inflated by their fragile egos clashed against each other, deteriorating the village. The gods? retribution: ?No one in the village would ever cross 25 years of age?. But they are given a chance to redeem themselves: put up a show everyday, provided it should have, at least, an audience of two members. This essentially encapsulates the predicament that every artiste faces.
Set against this background, the performers invite the audience, to experience and participate on their journey to regain their stature as the great artistes they were once known as. And redeem themselves, they do, but not easily.
After living the lives of others on stage, they are now brought back to reality: of endless existence. The prince becomes a pauper who mops the floor, the queen squeals for food, her baandhi (maid) tries haplessly to wash the dirt and stink off the carnival clothes, they start throwing crude invectives at each other. Amidst this anarchy and bedlam, the human katputhlis come to live, discard their strings in anger and play out the navarasas, the nine human emotions of anger, ugliness, fear, sadness, bravery, joy, wonder, love and, finally, peace through Koodiyattam, the traditional dance form of Kerala. The stage is no longer a stage; reality and drama, life and art become one. Just as in photography, a frame within a frame adds a completely new dimension to the picture, this play within a play bestows Old Town with a perspective on the life of an artiste, through the eye of an artiste.
The performers also take the spectators along this overwhelming emotional journey, paving the way for purgation, of emotional cleansing. Says Abel, ?It starts from anger, disgust and fear to getting yourself back, an ability to laugh at what you have done and loving yourself, to be at peace with yourself.?
Conceived and rehearsed in just a matter of 30 days, the play may have been the product of creative crises, but in the process it has helped the director and the cast in many innumerable ways. As Abel puts it, ?Old Town has healed me, healed the cast: they have regained their confidence and self-esteem as actors, and that is where the success of the play lies.?
