BENGALURU: Originally staged in 1971, Girish Karnad’s classic play Hayavadana is an intricate exploration of identity, desire, and the consequences of manipulating fate. A story about two friends and their shared love interest, the play takes inspiration from German writer Thomas Mann’s The Transposed Heads and ancient Indian literature to critique traditional Indian society. This weekend, veteran thespian and Padma Shri awardee Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry is bringing her interpretation of Hayavadana to the city in collaboration with Bhoomija.
“It’s a play that has always fascinated me. It combines myths, magic, metaphysics, and realism in such a complex and multilayered manner that it becomes a challenge for any director. The play can be seen from so many viewpoints. Is it about love, desire, the search for completeness, motherhood, or human relationships? There are many magical dimensions to this play that are not seen in many other texts,” shares Chowdhry, who is known for her unique style and approach to theatre, which often takes classic texts and roots them in contemporary issues.
“A play as a performative text travels through time and migrates into different spaces. That is why a play becomes a classic because it has the capacity and potential to transform in multiple ways. No two characters can perform the same play in the same manner,” she explains. “The changes I’ve made come from my own understanding of the text, which is not a fixed entity. It’s open to possibilities of change and metamorphosis.”
Despite its age, Hayavadana continues to hold contemporary relevance given the nature of the themes it explores. Yet, Chowdhry admits that taking on the play was challenging for her. “When you talk about fundamental emotions like love, hate, jealousy, betrayal, and guilt, the question of contemporary relevance doesn’t exist because these emotions are fundamental to human experiences,” she shares, adding, “I had seen many productions of Hayavadana, but there were always areas that were slightly incomprehensible to me.
It was a huge challenge to connect it with my own sense of heart. For many years, I haven’t been working with well-defined texts; I’ve been doing devised productions that pull techniques from various references and sources. To work with a text that has a beginning, middle, and end was a reversal of what I had been doing for the last 10 years.
But it was exciting. I have tried to bring in new dimensions, to reflect contemporary issues. The fluidity of the text, performance, and movement were important qualities I have tried to incorporate. Whether I have succeeded or not, I have no idea.”
(Hayavadana will be staged on June 1 and 2 at 3.30 pm and 7.30 pm at Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar. Tickets are priced at Rs 500 on bookmyshow.com)