Cobwebs dangled from the corners of the practice room inside the University Student’s centre. On the walls were hand-drawn images of Cheguvera and other revolutionaries. Kalamandalam Raji, Aparna and Remya are enacting the lines. The rest of the team are spell bound as they watch the scene unfold. The lines are from Dr Vayala Vasudevan Pillai’s play, ‘Aandu Bali’.
A classical play by all means, ‘Aandu Bali’, which bagged the Kendra Sangeeta Nataka Akademi Award, opened to a loud applause at the Sree Rama Centre at Delhi in 2010. This play revolves around the women characters, Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra and Hidimbi, and their reaction to the eighteen-day-long war of Kurukshetra. The two-and-half-hour play was later cut short by an hour owing to the time constraints.
Clustered in the noisy corridor, Vinod V Anand, Ratheesh K and T Aromal fondly recollect memories their mentor and guru, who passed away in August 2011. A Gandhian by choice, Vayala Vasudeva Pillai was always seen wearing whites. “Sir was an academician and this play is our way of giving him a tribute, a ‘bali’ in the true sense,” says Vinod, who is the manager of the team now.
“He gave his artists full freedom to interpret, to alter. He used to always say that actors aren’t puppets,” says Ratheesh who recalls how once he interpreted his role in a different way from what it was meant to be. “I was appreciated for it with a humble smile,” he adds. Ask Ratheesh about what he learned from his mentor and he retors - “punctuality and money’s worth. Theatre artists don’t generally earn a fortune and some days we just manage to scrape enough for two square meals. Vayala sir, who was generous with money, taught me the value of money.”
Aromal sinks into the intricacies of his works. “He was always combined the best values of all religions into his plays and this particular play proceeds through women’s point of view.”
His students are performing the play as a tribute to him in the veteran theatrician’s hometown Vayala in Kollam. There is a line in the play that goes, ‘kandu thripti aayengil erangi varu,’ (If you are satisfied with what you see, come down) The group consisting of 24 members cling to this line, and are aching to sense his presence during the play. The play was performed on September 18.