HYDERABAD: As in this lockdown period, stage performances are not possible, Shudrka, a theatre group of Hyderabad has, decided to pay tribute to Tagore on his 159th birth anniversary by reading out from one of his symbolic plays titled Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders) on Youtube from May 8.
The group selected this play because of its symbolist aesthetics which was a revolt against the external reality which had been the preoccupation of conventional theatre art. Tagore’s assimilation and application of the symbolist ‘techniques and values’ were distinctively original and individual. His symbolist play was more grafted to the Bengali folk forms than the symbolist dramatic mores of the West.
In this allegorical play the free spirit of man, symbolised in the person of a young girl, Nandini, is pitted against the ruthless power of the machine age. The archetypal issue of man vs machine is dramatised in symbolic term with externalised plot-action focusing on a process of evolutionary dynamism. Moreover, the characters are individualised with universal dimension.
The action in the play shows a movement from the state of unawakening to that of awakening. The dialogue shows an amazing resourcefulness -- musical speech, rhymed verse, imagistic prose in tune with the play’s texture. The music in the play reveals affinity with indigenous dramatic tradition of kirtan. The play also raises vital issues about man, machine and the conflict between humanity, development and nature which is of relevance even today.
It shows increasing concern with the basic problems of modern civilisation. Raktakarabi raises the more fundamental issue of the free spirit of life set against the more terrible machine of a highly organised and mechanised society which turns men into robots, reducing names to numbers. The plot is concerned with the diabolic use of technological knowledge, symbolised by the machine and for imperialist exploitation.