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Direction :
Starring : |
Rehaan Engineer
Jyoti Dogra, Radhika Apte, Radhika Mital.
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With the exception of productions like THE TRESTLE ON POPE LICK CREEK, there is nothing that is remotely obvious, straightforward or conventional about those Industrial Theatre Company productions that have been directed by Rehaan Engineer. And the audience familiar with his work will be quick to point out the same. The unsuspecting member on the other hand is quite likely to be unsettled by it all, if not distracted.
The latter in fact was the case with Engineer’s recent direction of Samuel Beckett’s THAT TIME, on which he has collaborated with Neha Choksi. The premiere show, which opened at Project 88, an art gallery in Colaba had two old Parsi ladies, who appeared to have little patience for such heightened experimentation. Before long they were busy whispering between themselves.
They might as well, like the rest of us could have been the ‘Listener’ of Beckett’s text. In the original, it is the listener who is the only visible character. He is a silent spectator to the interior monologues of three nameless characters (voices), who are not meant to be seen. Here we were too many of us (in spite of being less than 25, the number of people limited to per show) thrown unawares into a space, which could contain the confluence of performance and video installation art.
It was almost as if we, the ‘listeners’ in the audience were impinging on something that was too personal, even as it was fragmentary. It was like being witness to a collective unconscious but the distance was unmistakably set. We the ‘listeners’ were after all the observers too, moving from one character to the other. The combined effect of the video installation, which played on the different stages of sunrise/sunset along with the simultaneous, rambling voices of the three characters (who were cut off from each other), imbued the production with the desired art gallery effect. The characters were transformed into live, museum pieces as they spoke aloud their memories, all leading up to ‘that time.’
The three voices are played by women, which could again be a departure from the original. While Jyoti Dogra came across as being the most animated in her expressions and voice, Radhika Mital was able to evoke greater feeling for the text, which in a significant way is the manifestation of the stream of consciousness. Radhika Apte, with her soft voice was simply overshadowed by the other two.
Engineer’s productions appeal greatly at an experiential level. They emanate a bold, tactile quality that is unafraid to draw the audience into the vortex of the performance space. But having said that, the text does face the peril of being compromised in the process. My argument is not for sparkling clarity; indeed Beckett himself would have recoiled at such a thought but for greater appreciation, which at the moment is sorely missing. This was also somewhat the case with his earlier production of Steven Berkoff’s THE SECRET LOVE LIFE OF OPHELIA. In the meanwhile I guess one must be content with the sheer sensuousness of it all.
*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies.
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