Journalism of Courage
Through the play Einstein,Jitendra Wankhede aims to popularise the unknown life of the physicist amongst college students
The original play Albert Einstein:The Practical Bohemian written in the late 1970’s by Gabriel Emanuel drew huge crowds when it was performed by stage artiste Ed Metzger. So much so that it also became the only play on the physicist that was endorsed by Einsteins family themselves. Enter 2012 August,and Jitendra Wankhede,city-based theatre artiste,is revisiting the same play-his mission- to popularise the unknown life of Einstein amongst college-goers who only remember him for his Theory of Relativity. Having performed the play for the first time on Friday at the Gokhale Institute near BMCC Wankhede says that the enthusiastic approach of youngsters towards the play has prompted him to take it to colleges across the cities.
The 72-minute long play saw Wankhede not just act in it but also direct it. Essentially from a Marathi acting background,he says that he spend months researching the role,speaking to professors as well as researchers who had studied his life. To perform the character effectively the first thing that I had to do was to convince myself, he adds. Wankhede came across the original play in Mumbai last year and his own fascination towards the life of the scientist egged him on to take up the role.
Essentially the play has Einstein himself telling his life story. Wankhede reminisces,He was always in the eye of the storm for the world. As a child his parents and teachers considered him mentally retarded. After his theory was published people criticised it and even burnt books written by him in Nazi Germany. His first wife left him because he was too engrossed in his work and his second wife died in anonymity. Despite these personal tragedies,he tells his own story to the world leaving them to come to conclusions of their own. He doesn’t give out a pack of lies to make the audience happy. Just pure bare truths that he has endured all his life.
Wankhede will now be taking the play to Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) over the next two weeks. We will be showing it free of cost at colleges. My main aim is to popularise Einstein. Monetary benefits are always secondary to that, he says.
