The gateway to fantasies

Prasanth Narayanan attempts a new-age interpretation of Bhasa’s 2000-year-old Sanskrit play in Swapna Vasavadutta
The gateway to fantasies

KOCHI: Sometimes fantasy is not an aberration from reality, but a way you interpret it. In Swapna vasavadutta they meet, embrace and merge into a capricious blur.

“A dream is something you cannot share and in the play it’s quite difficult to draw an indisputable borderline between the two,” says Prasanth Narayanan on his new-age adaptation of Bhasa’s Sanskrit play.


Taking a 2000-year-old plot and placing it in the preset, he calls his 95-minute play a dramatic expedition without completely rejecting ancient Indian theatre. “The basic text is an elaborate one progressing through slokas and dialogues, giving you enough material to stage a seven or eight-hour play. What I have tried is to unleash it in another milieu, interpreting it from a fresh perspective,” he says.  

 
In Bhasa’s play, King Udayana is seen languishing in pain over the death of his queen Vasavadutta. In reality the queen is forced to live in disguise, making way for another royal alliance.

“It’s the story of queen-turned-maid Vasavadutta and it shows how woman becomes a mere tool in an essentially patriarchal system. She is denied all chances of self expression and often stripped off her identity. Despite being the queen she is caught in web of conspiracy and has to live as someone else,” says the director. 


Since Vasavadatta can’t express her emotions openly, she creates a fantasy world where she engages in long, delirious conversations with her husband.

“In reality she is the queen, but her new identity is that of Sairandhri, a lady-in-waiting. In the play I have tried to map her mindscape, her profound inner turmoil,” says Prasanth who adds that the feminist angle was not contrived, but something that increasingly evolved during the process. “It’s an attempt to approach the play with a modern-day mindset, placing it in another scenario.”    

  
In the play reality and fantasy are blended and superimposed making way for an all-new theatrical language.

“‘If it’s a dream I don’t want to wake’ is what the hero says in Bhasa’s play. Then there are disguises and traces of ancient theatre now you only see in art forms like  Koodiyattam,” he adds. The drama presented by Rangayana Dharwad, Karnataka, will be staged on March 22 at Tagore Hall at 6 pm.

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