BENGALURU: Actor Prakash Raj reunites with Forum Three, a Bengaluru-based theatre group, for Schweyk The Warrior, directed by Ranjon Ghoshal. The actor says going back to theatre in Bengaluru is like ‘coming back home’. He said, “The play is about dictatorship and war.
I am happy to be sponsoring it. It involves young people from different walks of life coming together to put up the production.” Recalling his theatre days 30 years ago, he said, “I am happy to associate with Ronjon Ghoshal and Forum Three again. Back then, I used to translate plays apart from acting. There used to be lot of energy and consistency in the work and I am glad to see that it exists even today.”
Ghoshal said, “Prakash Raj is an old alumni. He used to be a creative and an enthusiastic person and he still is. He met our cast and crew and was chatting with them. Back in the days, he used to translate my English plays to Kannada in a day.”
The musical Schweyk The Warrior is based on the play, Schweik In The Second World War by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Set in Prague in the backdrop of World War-II, it follows the life of a soldier named Schweyk. As he is forced into war, he manages to survive while overcoming dangerous situations in Gestapo Headquarters, a military prison, and a Voluntary Labour Service.
The ending finds Schweyk lost in a snowstorm near Stalingrad. He meets an equally lost and bewildered Hitler, whose path is blocked by snow, frozen corpses, the Soviet army, and Germans. Director Ghoshal said he decided to do this play because he’s been very fascinated by the works of Brecht since his college days. “He uses different elements in theatre such as alienation and wants the audience to be alienated. Unlike movies where people cry and laugh at some scenes and later forget them, he didn’t want the audience to emotionally engage in the play but be engaged intellectually,” he said.
“Though the play is set during World War II, it still holds relevance. The Pulwama attack may be recent, but we have been in conflict for a long time. India and Pakistan, both being nuclear powers, might soon declare war. But what did common man do to suffer war?”’ he asked.
Being a ‘difficult’ play, it took six months to work on the production. “We did research about the war, costumes and music. Since it’s a musical, we had to create original music which had to have a periodic stamp on it yet, we did not copy any music from those times. Creating costumes sitting in Bengaluru was also difficult as we had to make authentic dresses for soldiers, both from Czechoslovakia and Germany. We had to figure out clothes for different ranks in the German army. Some of our team members had visited Prague and museums there. We read and studied a lot of books and researched online to get the details right,” he explained. The play will be staged at Chowdiah Memorial Hall on March 16, 6pm.