Telling Tales

Marathi playwright Makarand Sathe tells Sanjukta Sharma that even though his golayug.com is experimental in its narrative, it can never be...

Marathi playwright Makarand Sathe tells Sanjukta Sharma that even though his golayug.com is experimental in its narrative, it can never be a tour-de-force. Why? Today theatre is driven more by a desire to be different rather than a new movement

Theatre of the Absurd, Play of Ideas 8212; call it any fancy name you want, Sathe has his own reasons for it. The dot.com world seems to alarm him. Almost disillusion him. quot;I don8217;t think urban India or urban Maharashtra is yet equipped to handle the invasion of Information Technology. We haven8217;t been able to keep pace with this whole global village8217; concept socially and psychologically. I8217;m talking about the individual. Which is why perhaps, things are just running out of our hands. Individuals don8217;t have a solution for anything. For instance, if I want to do something about a problem ailing the city or the nation, where do I start? What can I do? The individual has become faceless. Golayug is about this helplessness.quot; That the world is like a gola8217;, which, in Marathi, means a big, soft ball that can be distorted or melted easily.

This play happens to be drastically different from Sathe8217;s earlier plays, Charse Kuti Bisharbure, Surya Pehlila Manush and others in treatment 8211;though they all are driven by ideas. As the playwright himself admits, quot;I haven8217;t really been too finicky about craft and form as long as they communicate what I want to say. The concept has always been my main concern. I tend to assimilate from society at large and then convert them to ideas. I8217;m not interested in just one man8217;s tragedy.quot;

Which is why he decided not to make theatre his profession. Almost all his plays have been translated into English and staged in other cities, but he has resisted the temptation of making theatre his calling. quot;People are not going to pay for my plays if there8217;s a choice of going to a fun8217; play,quot; he smiles. And though he sounds rather resigned to that fact, the dwindling niche audience worries him. And not just in theatre, but the Arts in general. quot;It goes beyond this whole third world phenomenon which isn8217;t supposed to allow the Arts to grow because there8217;s no money for living. Even earlier, we were a third world nation. But a slice of the audience used to come and appreciate experimental works and their opinions would percolate to the audience, because they were the true intelligentsia, the opinion-makers of society. Now there8217;s no audience like that. People go to watch these plays primarily because they are in that circle; they want to be seen. They don8217;t take anything back with them. Nobody has the timeto intellectualise. Also there8217;s a lack of inspiration. Experimental theatre is not created out of a movement or an inspiration, but to maintain a tradition or just to be different. Besides how does one have a mainstream without experimenting? Mainstream borrows from the experimental.quot;

While Sathe does not see English theatre as a threat to regional playwrights at all 8212; quot;English theatre does not survive on its own, but on foreign or regional worksquot; 8212; he is apprehensive about the Kitsch bug entering regional theatre. quot;I am not optimistic at all,quot; he sums up.

Sathe however knows that even as cliche collapses on cliche and theatre deserts the dwindling intellectual8217; lot, his own commitment to art will not flag. He is smart enough to have discovered the middle path. And he drives himself down that road propelled by his disillusionment.

golayug.com at Experimental Theatre, NCPA. On May 17 amp; 18. Time: 6.30 pm.