KOCHI: “Rajan P Dev bid adieu to film wrold, theatre, which was his passion, and to the world itself. In the eighties, mainstream theatre in Kerala was in a confusion. People were talking about the end of this powerful art form, which once decided the fate, life and times of Keralites. Then plays were not having the same pungency as it used to have in the sixties, leave alone the red fifties. The themes and the structure of plays were not appealing anymore, the performance style had become stale and naturally the audience turned away from theatre.
Everyone was desperate and was looking for a new style, form and vigour”, said director Chandradasan.
“It was at this juncture that Rajan P Dev made his entry as ‘Kochuvava’ in ‘Kattukuthira’, written and directed by S L Puram Sadanandan for Suryasoma Theaters. The play dared to shift to a different mode of narration from the run-of-the-mill plots, developments, and characters. The theme of the play remained progressive and proletarian, but devoid of a hero who was a young idealistic, straightforward, chocolate face. The hero was substituted by an anti-hero, with a darker history, with vengeance crystallised inside as venom and who did not care about the set moralities and codes of conduct of the establishment.
The birth of this kind of a protagonist needed a new actor with a totally different approach to acting and characterisation,” he said.
Dev was confidence personified, says T M Abraham
Kochi: “As a theatre personality, Rajan P. Dev was confidence personified.
I would say that the ‘rude face of a villain’ was Dev’s plus point as well as the minus point. At the age of 20, he was successful in portraying the character of 60-year-old ‘Kochuvava’ in ‘Kattukuthira’, a play by Suryasoma Theatres. However, when the play was remade into a film he could not portray the character of ‘Kochuvava’, which I would say was a great loss to his career,” said playwright and director T M Abraham.
“Later, Dev moved to ‘Harisree Theatres’ to act in the play ‘Mullappoovukal Chuvannappol’(when the jasmine flowers turned red). The mentally retarded character in that play won him the State award for best actor. During his 6-7 years of association with theatre, he had set up his own troupe. However, he was not interested in experimental theatre. He was able to establish himself as an actor both in theatre and films very fast. When he moved on to films, I thought he would come back to theatre,” Abraham said.