QUEEN'S ROAD: Actor, writer and theatre director Padmavati Rao’s narratives revolve around missing links in urban consciousness. Between rehearsals of Pandyada Padakka Aadlu Pedakka, a puppet play that she will be putting up at three city slums in association with Rotaract Club (a youth organisation working in the area of community development) on Sunday, she talks about how our existence is shutting out nature, small joys and traditional wisdom. The play will address all this and the issue of polio eradication. She has used a simple folk tale to communicate the insidious power that inertia has on the human mind when just a bit of positive action can change destinies.
She explains, “Three life-sized puppets have been made out of junk and are manipulated by me and two other actors. And we tell the story of a couple who, for the sake of a wager, stay motionless when a robber sneaks in their home and walks away with everything. We are also a lot like that and don’t do simple things that could make our lives healthier and happier. The message that a simple vaccine can mean the difference between health and disability is directed at not just adults but also kids so that they grow up with the awareness of empowering choices.”
Padmavati insists that the play, a follow-up on the Pulse Polio movement, does not seek to hammer any message home. “We just want to keep India polio free for the next 100 years and this is a small gesture towards spreading some awareness. The 20 minute performance will be staged in a truck that will carry us to the slums of Murphy Town, Byappanahalli and Bhuvaneshwari Nagar. There will be recorded folk songs to accompany the performance. I will also be doing plays for school dropouts soon,” she says.
She passionately talks about the negation of “knowledge systems” that contributed to a wholesome life once. “When I work in slums or in rural areas, I realise that entire communities have been discarded and neglected over a period of time. Today, money is god and people don’t matter. I see such lonely hopelessness in villages where old people are often left to fend for themselves and you see some of them begging for survival. And these were people who once had land and wisdom that has been phased out by greed, so called progress and the desire to acquire more and more. We seem to have forgotten that we are an agricultural country and in the end, we cannot eat money. With migration of people from villages to cities, a way of life that was innately wise has been discounted.”
She adds, “Our children do not know which fruit grows on a creeper and which on a tree or a bush. We are like robots and we burn out so quickly. Where is the poetry, the music , the simple stories that show us a wholesome way of being?”
As a theatre professional, she is constantly trying to revive lost stories and she says, “I am willing to go to schools and any place where I can make a small difference and make people realise that without roots, our wings will be weak and our flights uncertain.”
To know about Padamvati’s workshops and theatre projects, write to her at afthouse@gmail.com.