Jest for a lark

On the second floor of a building in National College, Bandra, theatre director Rajat Kapoor and five performers are clowning around.Four...

On the second floor of a building in National College, Bandra, theatre director Rajat Kapoor and five performers are clowning around.

Four performers twist themselves beyond escape in a length of elastic in a classroom. Groaning, moaning, their bodies weaving in and out. Words don8217;t describe their facial expressions. Instead, reams of gibberish do, meaningless disconnected sounds.

C for Clowns is the latest to roll off the repertory of Kapoor, a part of the Delhi-based Chingari group, who has plays like Waiting for Godot, Who8217;s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Baal, as well as a yet-to-be-released film, Private Detective, behind him.

Kapoor caresses a cigarette, but doesn8217;t smoke it. 8220;I remember sitting with Atul8221; 8212; he gestures to one of the actors 8212; 8220;sitting in the green room, not saying anything, just smoking, waiting for the show to begin. That waiting is very special.8221; In the play too, the performers wait for their show to begin, for the bell to toll for them.

8220;Theclown motif has been with me for many of my plays, and all my experiences have been geared towards this,8221; says Kapoor. 8220;After all, clowns are a metaphor for any performing troupe. They also become a larger image, that of commentators, of narrators.8221;

The clowns communicate in a tongue of their own, comprising animal-like sounds but mostly the rhythm of their faces and bodies. The body here becomes the performer8217;s voice, speaking for his or her state: A kiss of love, the death of a loved one, tragedy, triumph. As a clown dies, waiting for the show to begin, disbelief, manic hope-against-hope, individual coping, tragedy, exaggerated mourning, silent weeping fleet through. The spoken word is silenced for the imagined one; the said is eased out by the felt. A clown silently daubs the dead clown8217;s face with make-up, then shatters in silence.

The play has been evolving since October, and the credits for the script display the names of the entire cast. That, explains Kapoor, is because the play has been, in asense, written by all the performers, who kept improvising on the germ of the idea. And the clowns periodically cajole, goad, even provoke the audience into reacting. 8220;Since it8217;s about a troupe of performers, the audience naturally becomes a part of their lives. The clowns get to interact with the audience, even get aggressive with them,8221; he says.

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C for Clowns premieres at Prithvi Theatre on March 18. If only he or she who has never done theatre can cast the first tomato, then it is fitting that he or she who has not been moved by countless performers unpeeling their selves for the love of acting give the play a miss.

C for Clowns at Prithvi Theatre. From March 18-21. Time: 9.00 pm.

Also, at Little Theatre, NCPA. On March 27 and March 28. Time: 7.00 pm and 6.30 pm.