Anmol Vellani is an eminent Bangalore-based theatre maker, actor, designer, and cultural evangelist. His play, APNE GHAR JAISA, a Ranga Shankara production, is travelling to Mumbai, after successful shows in Bengaluru. The play, about a woman, who has offered a room in her home to a paying guest, and during the process of waiting for him to arrive, confronts her own fears and prejudices. Excerpts from an interview:
By Deepa Gahlot
Would you like to talk a bit about the background of the play and how you decided to adapt this particular play to contemporary India? It's actually a long story. In 2019, Arundhati Nag was one of the curators for the theatre section of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. She had asked the Tamil actor Kalairani to develop a solo performance and the theme of the festival was Home. Kalairani requested Arundhati to ask me to direct her in a solo performance. But, of course,it was left to me to suggest material for this project.
And I remembered this play I had done in college actually called, OLDENBURG (by Barry Bermange), when I was in the University of Pune. At that point as students we didn't really think about its relevance, because the original play was written in 1968, and it was responding to the rise of anti immigration sentiments in England. So, it was really about an exploration of xenophobia, and its corrosive effect on British society. In adapting it, that wasn't my concern in 2019. Partly I was responding to the theme of home. But also I realized that in our situation, the fissures between people and groups are increasing and therefore we are tendering to other people in our midst in our samaj and as a result the perceived enemy is not just without, it is also within, and it's that that thing that I wanted to take forward. While it could not be an entirely solo performance because in the original play there is the husband and the wife on stage. I got rid of the husband, but I could not get rid of in the last part of the play-- the appearance of the guest whom she has been left to welcome into the house.
So, that was the real reason why I chose the play for Serendipity, because it is responding to the question of home; she is inviting a stranger into her home and what in her opinion that might do to violate certain things in the house that she wanted to preserve as they are. And she becomes a monster in the process; imagining what this fellow might do to the room, she destroys the room herself. My point is that these prejudices are not so fixed that we can't change them.This is really a monster within us which we need to fight.
Did you keep that in mind while designing the play, with a miniature set? Yes, well again, in the original there's a real set. That is not even practical because what happens is the husband and wife come together and break a real set and once you break it, it stays broken. I wanted to play with the idea that she is forming, reforming, breaking, creating again. It's a kind of cyclical process that is taking place which actually affected the way in which the plot moved. It stopped being linear as in the original play and there was a certain powerful symbolism of actually using a model of the room because it could be the model with which the son had played. So it began to take on multiple meanings. My writing again was affected both by the fact of that model and what I could, therefore, do with it, and the fact that she's alone on stage. It allowed the audience to access her inner world, and I could emphasize her loneliness and her desperation. Things that she wanted to say about her son which she can't say in front of her husband. Therefore, the room which in the original play is just a form with furniture and other things in it, becomes a room with memories, with emotions that she attaches to it, the tragedy and the conflict between her wanting to keep the room as it is because it is her son's room, and having to give it out to a guest, which they have to do because they need the money.
On the one hand there is a political aspect of the play and on the other it's also reflecting a situation a lot of urban families are facing, where the old people are left to cope on their own, and they don't no longer have a social support system to look after them. Is that also something that you were dealing with when you were writing this play? Not really, but I could see that that could be one sort of side effect of reading the play, but it wasn't central to my concern in the play.
The issues raised by the play are being faced by other societies also, the rise of the right wing in the West, for instance...Society expects the artist to ask questions, but it is also difficult to do that without putting yourself in the line of fire. How does an artist balance the need to communicate, with the fear that it might backfire? Well, you know, there are certain strategies that artists have used historically in oppressive political environments. For example, in Eastern Europe during the Cold War plays were written in such a way-- and they were known as the underground-that it escaped the Big Brother's eye, because they were largely metaphorical or allegorical. They were saying one thing but intending something else. They were winking at the audience, which understood what the play was intending but the police and the censor didn't quite follow what was going on. So, in a sense that is a strategy I am using in APNE GHAR JAISA. If you don't read it for allegorical meaning, because it does not explain itself in the play, you will miss the point. In fact you might hate the play because you’d think the voice of the protagonist is the voice of the play, which it isn't.
Could you mention an example of this from East European theatre? One example is that very famous play TANGO by Slawomir Mrozek, which I have done in Bombay as well as in Bengaluru. It's about a dysfunctional Bohemian family which has broken all the rules and the son, in response to that, has become very rule bound and very conservative. He wants his parents to also be a little more conservative in their thinking and behaviour, so he devises this plan to marry his cousin; there would have to be a traditional wedding, then what happens. On the one hand you could say that that's a play about generational gaps, on the other hand, at the political level what it's saying is this is how totalitarianism emerges, out of the chaos in society, and establishes its hold. The political meaning may not be understood if you were just reading the play directly. I mean, you could enjoy the play entirely as a farce on the generation gap in reverse. But that's not what the play is about.
So also did Kafka's INNOCENCE, which also had political overtones. Do you feel that the audience now expects this from you? That you give them food for thought or provoke them? I am not sure I have done enough theatre on a regular basis for people to begin to have expectations. I don't have as long a record or legacy, at least not a long one, you know, many plays over a short period of time. I think I do something every three years for four years. So, I'm not sure people have come to have certain expectations of me. When we're talking of people we're talking of the theatre community or the people who are interested in theatre.There's a generational shift also in the theatre community itself. Right? People have seen my place in Bombay in the 70s and 80s. I know the same people are viewing my plays today in Bangalore, essentially. Also you find that if there is an actor who has a profile in cinema, then people who are not part of the theatre community come to see the play. As it happened yesterday. The show was bought up by one person, and he invited many people to come to see it. Some of them were seeing a play for the first time. And they all came because Padmavati was in it and their response was amazing. I found that their response was more open, more spontaneous, more giving, more generous to the play, then you find with the average slightly jaded theatre audience.
You've been an art philanthropist and now you have stepped back a bit from India Foundation for the Arts. Do you feel that this period now is for you, personally, a more creatively fulfilling phase? I certainly think so. There's been a lot of frustration while I was in fact helping other people in the arts. My own work had to take a back seat because I was quite busy in those years. And though I did a play off and on even while pursuing a career in philanthropy, it was still now and then. My work in theatre actually also expanded because I'm not just directing plays, I'm writing on the arts more. I'm doing design work. I've taken design courses. I do actor training. So, my investment in the theatre is much more diverse than it used to be in the earlier
Certain plays, like this one, are the kind that you can't just forget about and go off for dinner afterwards. Do you think a discussion with the audience is required? You know, we just have a curtain call, we don't have people coming on stage and introducing actors and so on because it actually creates quite a solemn mood in the audience. In fact, it very often doesn't lead, thank God, to a standing ovation. People just sit there stunned. They clap weakly or loudly and then quietly troop out. And I have noticed people do not want to talk after this performance. They are so affected by it that they're not in the mood to have a discussion. I thought about it. But then seeing the response, I felt maybe that's not the case. And in fact, the good thing about the play is that it draws repeat audiences. You've seen it once, come again, come again. So, many people have seen it two, three, four times.
So, not officially, but casual responses, what you think are people getting, are they imbibing the message so to say. I remember one old lady said, the play should have been called HAR GHAR JAISA. That's a really good point.
You have worked with a lot of adaptations, is there any writer with whom you could consider a kind of collaboration, by which they work on the ideas that you are mulling over? My plays are radically different in terms of form and each places different kinds of demands on people and the kind of talents I need for that particular play. There are political playwrights rights whose work I quite like. Abhishek Mujumdar is a playwright I have actually worked with, but I worked on his plays-- I have done design for two of his plays, MUKTIDHAM and KAUMUDI. I did the lights for both of those plays. So, he is a playwright whose work I enjoy.
Is there any one of your plays that you'd like to revisit? I've revisited TANGO and EXIT THE KING in Bombay, Calcutta and and here in Bangalore over the years. Each time because I saw a new way of looking at the play, a new way of doing it, in a different setting than imagined in the original play. So, when it excites me to think.
(*Deepa Gahlot is a journalist, columnist, author and curator. Some of her writings are on deepagahlot.com)
