Poetry in motion

Come dusk and the iron gate creaks open. About half a dozen children run over the courtyard into the bungalow. A diya is lit before Ganpati ...

Come dusk and the iron gate creaks open. About half a dozen children run over the courtyard into the bungalow. A diya is lit before Ganpati and Krishna idols, as the children begin to pray. And after the prayers, grandma sings poems of nature, of her childhood, of festivities and of loneliness. The words and the music of grandmother8217;s poems stays with the children, even after they8217;re long over.

A SLICE of childhood spent in the 1940s and 1950s. Which thereafter ceased to be. Acclaimed Marathi poet, Pravin Davne, agrees. quot;We live in times when we8217;ve lost such grandmas and grandchildren,quot; he rues. And gone with them is our capacity to appreciate poetry naturally, he says.

Yet the genre is far from dying. Thanks to a clever ploy poets began staging poetry. Devout poetry fans crowd poetry reading sessions. But the likes of Pune-based Chandrakant Kale and Anand Modak went a step further. They breathed life into poetry as they thoughtfully merged two genres poetry with theatre. The result was Sajanvela.Based on select 14 poems by popular Marathi poet Manik Godghate known by his pen name, Grace, it is a theatrical stage performance.

When director Kale and music director Modak, picked up Grace, they banked on the confidence of having staged under the aegis of Shabdavedh two other poetry performances8217;, Amrutgatha in 1988 and Preetrang in 1992. They didn8217;t wish to turn the show into a lecture on Marathi literature. quot;Too much explanation makes even the finest poetry sound mundane,quot; says Kale.

The duo8217;s poetry performance8217; is a golden mean sought between a poetry reading session and an outright musical. quot;Poems will be sung and the poet8217;s thoughts, in prose, will connect his poems,quot; says Kale. This prose will provide the ground for theatre.

Kale first read Grace in 1992 when his poems were incorporated in Preetrang. While he was impressed by Grace8217;s style, Modak found his imagery arresting. The theatre person in Kale at once detected the dramatic potential of Grace8217;s words and verse. quot;His, is atremendously theatrical language,quot; he says, in appreciation of the poet8217;s work.

The fact that critics often complain about the incomprehensible element in Grace8217;s poetry, doesn8217;t seem to bother Kale and Modak. The latter terms it as the poems8217; quot;hypnotic powerquot;. quot;It8217;s the poems8217; mystic quality not incomprehensibility,quot; says the former, vehemently, quot;Not everyone understands Picasso or Van Gogh, but it doesn8217;t mean you don8217;t exhibit them.quot;

Story continues below this ad

So, Shabdavedh is out to do exactly that present the difficult in an easy-to-understand way. The music has been composed in easy meters. quot;Orchestration has been kept to a minimum level. We have used only the Spanish guitar, a tabla and an organ,quot; says Modak. Despite the fact that it8217;s going to be a stage performance, the team insists that poetry is the spine of the show. They have made it simple for people to understand.But it hasn8217;t been such an easy task for the team. Selecting just 14 poems was a problem and composing them was even more difficult. Here they admit thatstaging Grace8217;s poetry was a challenge. It took Modak two-and-a-half months to compose music for the poems. quot;I felt like I had recovered from typhoid after I completed the music,quot; he says. Kale had to rehearse for over two months with other singers Mukund Phansalkar and Madhuri Purandare besides himself. And the guiding force behind all the efforts was the conviction that sincere efforts are always appreciated.

Both, Kale and Modak know that their8217;s is an odd job markedly different from the stage shows of popular poetry. But they are confident about their product. Modak strikes a stunning analogy. quot;There8217;s bound to be a difference between Raj Kapoor8217;s ever so successful films and those by Satyajit Ray. That doesn8217;t mean all would make films like Kapoor did,quot; he says.On April 11, 1998 at 7.00 pm and at 6.30 pm on April 12 at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA.