Made to Believe

To be staged as part of the Chandigarh Heritage Festival,Allana,chairperson of the National School of Drama,agrees it was a tough process for her and the team of actors,transposing images into a format and expressing the magic with visuals,dance,music and the set. “With six women actors and one male actor the story is about women,told by women and from a woman’s perspective. Each actor exchanges roles,with each one playing the grandmother at some point during the play,creating different equations and a dream-like quality,” explains Allana,who,along with Salima Raza,helped adapt the play.

Improvisations,including created masks for every actor,added to the effect. Again,time was not chronological or sequential,with random events interspersed,blurring even the boundaries of gender as all women play the part of a man and the lone male is used to enact a woman.

The play is visualised as a Rajasthani tale and the production employs music,dance,puppets and masks in order to capture the strange,haunting and mystical quality of Marquez’s story of a woman’s articulation of her experience. Taking its inspiration from both the Colombian ‘carnival’,as well as the trance-like rituals performed at Indian shrines,the production meshes the diverse cultural ethos into a single celebratory performance.

There is a blend of rhythms,movement,costumes and performance style that creates links between India and Latin America,lending substance to the inter-cultural experience. “We retain the Latin-American and Indian context,drawing inspiration from both the cultures,’’ adds Raza. The imagery flows seamlessly as there are no borders and boundaries,with the language and culture of bordering states of Rajasthan finding place here. The production is eight years old now and according to Nissar Allana,the set designer,the play is layered and the “the set such that it lifts one from the ground and takes the actors and audience above,creating a dream-like,magical imagery,as if one is floating in the air”.

The play will be staged at the Tagore Theatre on Wednesday at 7 pm.