Applause/ ‘I make life a springboard and take flight’

As actors rehearse for his new play, K.N. Pannikar turns into an active spectator. He sways with the music, keeps beat with his palms, signals to musicians to adjust the volume, and cranes his body forward to watch actors entering and leaving the centre stage. At 86, the theatre veteran and legend is not involved as much as he is immersed in the stage. When a play is presented, Pannikar isn’t among the directors who can sit among the audience. “I am active behind the curtains,” he says. Lately, he has been trying to change. “I have started sitting and relaxing among the audience, but it is difficult to go away from a play,” he says. His new play, Chhaya Shakuntalam opened the Bharat Rang Mahotsav, the annual drama festival of the Delhi-based National School of Drama, on January 4. Another play, Sangamaniyam, on gender concerns, is on the anvil. Excerpts from an interview:

From Kalidas’s romantic classic Abhijnana Shakuntalam, how did you create a play about the art of governance?
In the play, king Dushyanta is shown as being answerable to his people. Chhaya Shakuntalam is a retelling of Kalidas’s text by the famous Hindi poet Udayan Vajpeyi. We have adapted it so that Dushyanta represents the establishment. When the people prepare the ground for his hunting, they think he is merely hunting deer or mrigaya and they are alright with it. But, mrigaya has another meaning — it refers to a search. In this case, king Dushyanta forgets his royal duties in his search of Shakuntala, his mind is wavering like silk in the wind and he forgets his responsibilities. That’s when the people come on stage, pointing their fingers at him and saying “here is a king who has strayed”. A ruler must always keep his duties towards his people in mind.

You have revisited Kalidas in another new play.
The play is called Sangamaniyam and it has also been written by Udayan Vajpeyi — he wrote in Hindi and I in Malayalam. This one unites all three heroines of Kalidas — Shakuntala, Malaviya and Urvashi. All three purusha or men are also present but as one embodiment, because all of them are trying to inflict some kind of injustice on women. Shakuntala represents the meek woman , while Urvashi is Damini or lighting. Malaviya is a bridge between the two — both meek and bold. Each heroine represents one facet of nature; they are prakriti. The men cannot be true purusha until they respect prakriti. The first show of this play will be held in Bhopal on February 3.

Your fascination for classical texts is matched by the prevalence of traditional music and dance in your plays. Comment.
It amazes me that in these classical texts I still find matters of contemporary relevance. As a child, we used to hear the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It has never left me and it has inspired everything I do. My knowledge of music and movements, too, comes from my village where the agricultural people would perform all their tasks to music. I live in Thiruvananthapuram, but I still go back to my village, Kavalam in Kerala. There’s a reason I use live music in plays. For me, theatre is more than a slice of life. It is the trigger to fly. I, too, make life my springboard and take flight. We can experience life in imagination. A major aspect of an actor springs out when he is out there facing the audience. It happens on the spot, on stage. Recorded music would be a poor way to create such an experience.

Indian traditional stories have also influenced your adaptations of foreign classics.
When I worked on William Shakespeare’s plays, I adapted Tempest and Midsummer Nights’s Dream to suit Indian sensibilities. My version of Prometheus Unbound, about the Greek hero who discovered fire, is called Arani or the wood that creates fire for yajna and the hero Prometheus is called Pramada or the one who creates a blunder. One of my exciting productions was Illiayana — a mix of the Illiad and the Ramayana — for which I collaborated with a Greek scholar.