RAKTAPUSHPA, written in 1971, is one of Mahesh Elkunchwar's celebrated scripts. In this play, the playwright explores the inner emotional universe of his characters. The Marathi as well as Hindi version of the play (ARAKTA KSHAN) was staged by renowned experimental director Satyadev Dubey in the early eighties. With actors like Amrish Puri and Sunila Pradhan, the Hindi production had done full justice to Elkunchwar's exploration of the female consciousness - a consciousness shaped by bodily changes (puberty to menopause) and their inevitable psychological effects.

RAKTAPUSHPA'S performance by Nasik-based group, The Genius, was a sincere attempt to understand the playwright's psychoanalysis of a distressed middle-aged woman whose anxieties stem from various factors. The woman (played by Vidya Chitale - Karanjikar) has just lost her adolescent son. There is a growing realization of her lost youth as well. And to top it all, she has lost her ability to relate to her husband (Suhas Velhankar) and school-going daughter (Mrunal Dusnis). The only solace in her life is the adolescent paying guest (Chinmay Udgirkar) - a school boy who not just reminds her of her dead son, but also arouses her sexually. The playwright in fact traces the journey of two women with different sexualities -- a wife-cum-mother who is devoid of sex life; a daughter who has just begun exploring her sexuality. The two women, bound by laws of Nature, raise some key issues about sex, the human power of creation and the basic question -- whether a life devoid of sex signifies death of some kind. The title RAKTAPUSHPA has an obvious correlation with menstrual blood and the play has abundant references to the menstrual cycle. The Genius theatre group deserves congratulations for the sensitive treatment of the taboo subject. Their performance (January 7 2009) was a definite highpoint of the five-day Elkunchwar festival in Mumbai, which was hosted by Awishkar.

Like Mahesh Elkunchwar's plays, his essays and newspaper columns are also thought-provoking comments on his times. His anthology of essays in MAUNRAAG bring home the perceptive writer's minute observations on various aspects of life - something as personal as his mind image of Lata Mangeshkar or something as philosophical as the father-son bond or something mundane like village greenery.

Director Chandrakant Kulkanri, who had mounted Elkunchwar's WADA trilogy, zeroed in on MAUNRAAG when he was asked by Awishkaar theatre group to present a play for the commemorative Elkunchwar festival. He found various possibilities of intimate theatre in MAUNRAAG. In fact, he had not decided on the exact nature of his presentation even when he addressed media persons on the outline of the five-day festival. "My actors Sachin Khedekar and Kishore Kadam have been given full freedom to present Elkunchwar's writings. It could be a mere reading or a mono-act with minimal props. But we want to showcase the playwright's take on life. The rest is peripheral."

Kulkarni's MAUNRAAG did make an impact on January 7 2009. Khedekar and Kadam presented one story each from the anthology. Khedekar, who is known for a peculiar repetitive style of acting, delivered a very sincere and straight-from-the-heart exposition of Elkunchwar's musings on the concept of a home. Born to a Telugu Brahmin family and raised outside of Indian urban centers, Elkunchwar was very emotionally attached to his childhood house in Parwa. Although he lived over there for a very short period, the house signified divine happiness for him. The story underlines Elkunchwar's special reasons to revisit the house much later in adult life. Khedekar has virtually lived Elkunchwar's feelings and mental associations. Very rarely does one find that kind of identification between the actor and the writer. Interestingly, Khedekar had played Abhay Deshpande (a character that goes close to Elkunchwar's personal mental make-up) in the Wada trilogy.

Unlike Khedekar who enacted the story with minimal props, the second story was merely read out by Kishore Kadam. It underlines the myriad possible ways in which different developments and individuals leave an impact on human mind. While certain places embody specific noises and smells, others evoke exclusive visuals. Some people make an impact through words, whereas some take recourse to the most-vocal weapon of silence. And some give you powerful thoughts, ideas for a lifetime. The story recalls thinkers, artistes, musicians who made an indelible impact on Elkunchwar's mind. Kadam presents the story with passion but he seemed under rehearsed.

SONATA was penned by Mahesh Elkunchwar in the year 2000. It was first directed in English by Amal Allana in New Delhi. The English script is also included in the recently-published collection of six acclaimed Elkunchwar plays. The Pune-based Samanvay group performed the original Marathi version of SONATA at the Awishkaar theatre festival on January 8 2009.

Director Sandesh Kulkarni has done a good job in appreciation of Elkunchwar's universe. The play revolves around three women Aruna (Ashwini Giri), Dolan (Gargi Phule) and Subhadra (Rajashree Sawant - Wad). These are three non-conformist unconventional lives - free and outrageous, but also lacking and lonely in some ways. Elkunchwar deals with these unmarried women with a lot of compassion. Director Kulkarni has appreciated that sensitivity in his production.

The action takes place in one drawing room at one night. Three girlfriends share their innermost thoughts. They often hurt each other, knowingly and unknowingly. All three are very unlike each other - one is a prudent mature scholarly Maharashtrian, another food-loving, happy-go-lucky fat Bengali and the third one- an exceptionally, gregarious free spirit with quite an appetite for men. All the three actresses display a good stage chemistry. Just that Gargi Phule needs to work on the few Bengali lines that the script requires her to speak. Her accent needs to be truly Bong, not the fake Bengali voice that she attempts. Similarly, Ashwini Giri needs some sessions in phonetics, so that `Keats' does not become `Kits'. Rajashree Sawant - Wad is of course the best of the three. She really comes across as the F word-spouting North Indian. The actress, once a promising young actress in many low-budget, socially meaningful films has indeed matured with age.

Kulkarni's SONATA is worth revisitng.

Danseuse Rajashree Shirke and late director Chetan Datar worked very closely on the genre of theatre dance- 'rang nritya' as they called it. In the last decade, a number of productions like MATA HIDIMBA emerged from their self-developed style. HARAVLELE PRATIBIMB, is one powerful expression of this 'rang nritya' idiom. While Datar is no more, Shirke and her dancers (assembled under the group called Lasya) presented the play on January 9, as part of the Elkunchwar festival. It was Shirke's special homage to Elkuchwar as well as to her colleague Datar.

A m�lange of body language, speech, music, the play is indeed a rich experience for the audience. The possibilities of dance have been studiously explored and exploited. Similarly, the content does not suffer due to the music and dance paraphernalia on the stage. Dancer Vaibhav Arekar plays the protagonist Thokle, a man who wakes up to realize the loss of his reflection in the mirror. Unable to contain the anxiety over the loss of its mirror image, he shares the problem with his landlady (Rajashree Shirke) and another Marxist friend (Ashish Nevalkar). What follows is a comic exchange which operates on dual levels -- the real as well as symbolic. Each line, seemingly simple, signifies some basic existential dillema of today's times. Elkunchwar's basic thesis - the loss of self in a fast-paced metro - is brought out beautifully in a span of one hour forty minutes.

Loss of mirror image signifies the chaos that envelops each one of us. While most of us accept the chaos, playwrights like Elkunchwar refuse to give in. They write plays that remind us of how insensate we have become.

*The writer is a Media Assistant with the Public affairs Section of the American Centre, Mumbai. A keen observer of theatre and other Performing Arts, she is a freelance writer and a journalism teacher at the Xavier's Institute of Communications (XIC). She also writes a fortnightly column on Marathi theatre trends for Time Out Mumbai.