Theatre Meanderings Up Close & Far Away Part 2: Three Podcasts By Playwrights On Playwrights
April 7, 2020 6:18:09 PM IST Deepa Punjani
Last week in Part 1 of this series I had listed three international theatre websites that are rich in content and which offer multiple perspectives in the form of essays, reviews, interviews, features, etc. from around the world.
Covid-19 has upended lives everywhere but art finds a way to deal and to heal.
Writers, and among them, playwrights, have shaped our understanding of the world, of people, of our foibles and our strengths. They have looked at events in unique and different ways, brought us closer to appreciating history, society, culture, and politics.
They have creatively shaped their stories in myriad ways, sometimes mocking us and even daring us. We have laughed and cried as we recognise our shadows everywhere, but perhaps in all this, we have come away a little more sensitive, a little more humble.
This is what we need to precisely remember now.
Here are three podcasts by playwrights and on playwrights. These give us insight into the lives, the minds, and the craft of these select, but very different playwrights, of what makes their work special, and ultimately human.
David Hare has been one of the most influential playwrights in postwar British drama. He is also a screenwriter and has written a memoir The Blue Touch Paper. The podcast, organised by the newspaper The Guardian's Live event in London in 2015, is conducted by Jonathan Freedland, and draws on Hare's memoir to talk about his life and his work in Britain of the 60s and the 70s. In the podcast, David Hare recalls his formative years and effectively underpins the society and the politics that informed and transformed his writing from the pre-Thatcherite to the post Thacherite years.
Václav Havel, one of the foremost playwrights of the 20th century world stage, went on to become the President of his country the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. His was an extraordinary journey that spoke up to the abuses of power even as he came from a privileged background. MEMORANDUM, one of the widely staged plays across the world, is a wonderful satire on bureaucracy and the subversion of language. Havel's plays have also been regarded as essential reading of the genre of the ‘theatre of the absurd'. Michael Zantovsky, Havel's friend and advisor wrote Havel: A Life in which he gives an account of Havel's life, his work, and his pivotal role in the Velvet Revolution that marked the end of the monopoly of the Communist regime in the country and made way towards a parliamentary republic. Michael Zantovsky was hosted by the Leonard Lopate show in New York city in 2014.
In this two-part podcast Ramu Ramananthan presents fascinating insights into the life, times, and works of Vijay Tendulkar, particularly his plays. Tendulkar, who has been immortalised in modern Indian theatre history, was a prolific writer who began as a journalist. Ramu Ramanathan had the opportunity to know him personally and interact with him. They didn't always agree but what one finds is an abiding respect for the form of playwriting of which Tendulkar was a master in the Indian context. As a playwright himself, Ramu Ramanathan is able to more keenly appreciate the nature and style of Tendulkar's plays, but importantly, in this very engaging podcast packed with anecdotes and trivia, Ramu Ramanathan provides us with a socio-historical backdrop that defined Tendulkar's work, of what made it so much more relevant then, and some of it even now. The podcast is hosted by Audiogyan's Kedar Nimkar.
Also Read other Parts of Theatre Meanderings Up Close & Far Away
*Deepa Punjani has been writing on theatre and reviewing it over two decades. She represents the Indian National Section of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC). As a professional lawyer, she is focused on media and entertainment law. Her freelance journalism also includes legal journalism.
