Chennai-based theatre group Nisha is acclimatising to a bigger stage and new spaces. The troupe is making its maiden performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with ‘Singarreva and the Palace’, a theatre adaptation of Chandrashekhara Kambara’s novel by the same name, this month. The play is a part of a series of one-woman shows the troupe has lined-up this year. They are rehearsing at a new venue everyday to be familiar with the unfamiliar spaces. Its actors are trying a different drape everyday to explore the physical possibilities. Nisha’s founder and director Balakrishnan Venkataraman, says, “We had staged Dr Chandrashekhara Kambara’s Siri Sampige and had read his works. A birthday gift, of Singarevva and the Palace seduced us into performing it as a play. We are rehearsing and getting the components together.” From the riveting retelling of the life story of the ravishing and controversial dancer and spy Mata Hari in Mata Hari:Butterflies Who Live in the Sun Must Die Young; the agonies of women lifers in Aparadhini; the dance-dialogue narrating the vengeful journey of wronged princess Amba (from Mahabharata) in The Peacock Prince to the account of a woman tormented by the men in her life in Singarreva and the Palace, the series give a voice to characters—drawn from mythology, history or real life. “The group has a clan of talented women actors who do tremendous justice to the scripts,” adds Balakrishnan.
Founded in 2000, the group has so far produced over 50 plays in English, Tamil and Hindi and scripted plays for schools and colleges. “We have also worked with Sanskrit and non-verbal texts. Good theatre is seen and never heard,” adds Balakrishnan, who graduated in acting from the National School of Drama in 1998. Why women centric plays? “It’s not driven by ideology, but this year has been a year of women-centric plays. The woman actors in my group have stayed on while the men have moved away.”
Nisha has participated in festivals including National School of Drama’s Theatre Festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsav, where it presented Andhi Veli (2004) and What is to be done with Sathe? (2007); StageRite Theatre Festival (performed Thicker Than Blood), IPTA Theatre Festival (Asghar) Purusai Theatre Festival (Andhi Veli), and the Short +Sweet Theatre Festival among others. An admirer of playwrights such as Girish Karnad, Bhasa, Gowri Ramnarayan, Sarah Kane, Bertolt Brecht and Chandrasekar Kambara, Balakrishnan says his plays favour themes based on women, war, law and mythology. “Mythological stories make an immediate impact on us ,” says Balakrishnan, who has rendered a theatre adaptation of Devdutt Patnaik’s The Pregnant King. Set in the backdrop of Mahabharata, it narrates the story of king Yuvanashva who mistakenly drinks the magic potion meant to make his queens conceive.
He trusts the power of music in theatre performance. “Music is also created through the spoken words of an actor,” he adds. While studying acting at NSD, Balakrishnan saw some of the most remarkable plays —Mohan Maharishi’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Devendra Raj Ankur’s Katha Collage, Bansi Kaul’s Ek Tara Tuta, and Mariuz Orski’s The Marriage. He says, “NSD taught me how to value the written word, to perform honestly, to respect and adorn the empty space, and the value of body and voice.”
Actors at Nisha work in sync as if they were parts of a single mind. The body and voice development is done on a day to day basis. Rehearsals are devoted to the development of the visual presentation of the script. Meera Sitharaman, an actor who has been associated with the theatre since 2007, says, “Bala sir is open to suggestions and brings out the best in us.” The group’s ‘language of theatre’ “is that of honesty.” Balakrishnan adds, “We do not see ourselves as path-breakers. We see ourselves as individuals who wish to redeem our existence.”