CHENNAI: We are welcomed inside the auditorium by thunder and rain. The effects seem so real that we stop to understand that it is just for a play. “The sound-light team, musicians and actors has intense rehearsal sessions, in order to be able to captivate the audience,” says G Krishnamurthy, actor-director of the play Ramanujar by Sharddha, a theatre seeding organisation, commemorating the 1,000th year of the saint.
The organisation has put together around 26 Tamil plays in seven years and they wanted something special for this year. “Last year we had done Aurangazeb, a play written by Indira Parthasarathy. We loved it so much that we started reading more of his works. That’s when we stumbled upon Ramanujar,” he shares.
Ramanujar, a saint, born in 1017 AD, is said to have lived for 120 years and the play looks at his life, but not in a linear order. “It is not easy to show a person’s life as a calendar order. We have picked facets of his life that will resonate with the audience,” he points out.
The team worked closely with the 88-year-old playwright, who according to Krishnamurthy, gave them the full freedom to explore it for theatre. “He told us that he will not interfere in a director’s work, and maintained that throughout. In fact he asked us to edit the play to an hour and 45 minutes but we couldn’t trim it beyond 2 hours and 10 minutes,” he adds.
The play, that has been staged over five weekends, makes use of pasurams, and it is accompanied by music. “It is a great experience to sing live on stage and act. Pasurams are rendered in a form called Goshti, like in a mantra style. The whole team of 35 learnt this in two and a half months.”
Ramanujar is written by the playwright keeping in mind the modern audience. “Indira Parthasarathy (Ee Pa) has looked at him as a reformer, revolutionary and a missionary,” says Krishnamurthy. “In Guru Parambarai, there is a story of girl who is possessed. But in the script, Ee Pa has looked at it psychologically. He shows that she is affected because of a war that took place three years ago and how Ramanujar shows her the way of life,” he points out.
Interestingly especially for this play, Indira Parthassarathy wrote a new scene. “Twenty years after his book was published, Ee Pa shared with us a scene where Ramanujar gives up the Grihasta ashram and years later meets his wife. What questions his wife asks him and how it changes their life forms the rest of the scene. In my opinion that elevates the character of Ramanujar, Thanjamma and the play too,” he smiles.
Music for the play was challenging but the script by the playwright made it easy for them. “Ee Pa has combined pasurams from Nalayira Divya Prabandham with contexts from Ramanujar’s life,” he adds. The music was tuned by Karthikeyamurthy and Janani composed the songs.
The team also took the liberty of making a few songs into folk music. “There is a scene where during Ramanujar’s exile he watches a set of people digging the ground. The song is placed by Ee Pa in that context and we felt a folk song would suit that kind of an environment. We had the freedom to make such changes,” says Krishnamurthy.
A saint with a modern outlook
Ramanujar was written by Indira Parthasarathy in 1997 and it won the Saraswathi Samman in 1999. His idea was to de-institutionalise the saint and show what he stood for. Ramanujar is among the first who abhorred the idea of caste system and fought for equal rights of women. He also brought in Tamil to the temple shrines and made the Nalayira Divya Prabandham a way of life.
Ramanujar will be staged on November 4 and 5 at Vani Mahal. For details visit eventjini.com