By Meghachandra Kongbam
Ratan Thiyam
Well-known theatre director-actor M.K.Raina once remarked, “ Ratan’s plays are strongly rooted in a local context. The classical Manipuri dance and tribal martial arts, accompanied by local costumes, have shown us that if we tap into our local traditions in the right way, the world will listen to us.”
Ratan Thiyam himself strongly believed that aping western traditions in Indian theatre would not be called Indian theatre. Only regional performing arts traditions which were very rich in India could enliven Indian Theatre.
That is why he had intensified in inviting local performing arts Gurus from all nook and corner of the country to teach the local traditions to the students of National School of Drama, New Delhi while he was the Director of the premier theatre institution of India in 1987-88.
He is a great dreamer of aesthetics as well as a great communicator who is able to visualize the meaningful aesthetics to the varied audience with a great impact.
Ratan Thiyam once stated that he had always endeavoured to create all the pieces of local performing arts in a classic or refined form when it had been fabricated to his plays.
When we dead awakenNo one can stop his amazing visual aesthetics in the plays. His latest production-WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN which was premiered on December 17 at Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi here during the Delhi Ibsen Festival from December 10-20, 2008 has again proved his more perfection in the field. He created the production of Henrik Ibsen’s play as if an Indian production emerging from the Manipuri soil. It was another masterpiece which could give an impact to the Norwegian audience and Indian audience as well.
After watching the show, the noted film personality Shyam Benegal remarked, ” I’ve watched a number of Ibsen’s performances all over the world and have been following the Delhi Ibsen Festival but Ratan Thiyam’s version of this play is certainly the best I’ve seen till date.”
The Royal Norwegian Embassy initiated the Festival in co-operation with Nissar Allana, Director of the Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA), New Delhi with an aim to celebrate and explore the new dimensions of the 19th century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) who was known as the ‘Father of Modern Drama’.
The Festival contained three Indian Ibsen- productions namely, John Gabriel Borkmann directed by Anuradha Kapur from Delhi on December 15, Little Eyolf by Neelam Mansingh from Chandigarh on December 16 and When We Dead Awaken by Ratan Thiyam from Imphal on December 17; three Norwegian productions namely Lady from the Sea by Un-Magritt Nordseth on December 10-11, White Horses by Jon Tombre on December 12-13 and Ibsen Women by Juni Dahr on December 18; and a cross –professional two-day seminar on December 19-20. All Indian productions were performed with movable sets and props in front of black cyclorama. Ibsen Women is a solo performance of Juni Dahr enacting six different women’s journeys towards independence and freedom, of the leading characters of Ibsen’s plays- The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler, The Ghost, Doll’s House, Lady from the Sea and Vikings of Helgeland. The two Norwegian directors used a giant static set with characters rendering their dialogues. Supertitle in English of all the plays communicated the plays to the audience. Ratan Thiyam avoided supertitle except few lines to draw more attention of the audience to his performance.
When We Dead Awaken is the last play written by the Ibsen in 1899 and it When we dead awaken was first staged in Stuttgart in 1900. Ratan Thiyam’s play in Manipuri has duration of about 80 minutes and consists of 24 artistes.
The play is suffused by an intense desire for life, but whether it can be achieved is left problematic, given the play’s ironic conclusion. Arnold Rubek is an ageing, celebrated sculptor who has achieved great international fame with his sculpture “The Day of the Resurrection”. The model for this piece of sculpture was Irene, who earlier had considered it her lifework to accompany Rubek and help him in his work. They appear to have had strong feelings for each other at that time, but Rubek refused to consider Irene as anything more than his model, so, disappointed and angry, she left him. Since then, Rubek’s creative power has diminished, and he now feels that he can no longer create art of any significance. Irene, alone, holds the key to his creativity. He has married Maja, a considerably younger woman, and the two of them have lived abroad in a marriage that has gradually become somewhat cool. In the Ibsen’s script, the play opens with Rubek and Maja staying at a seaside hotel in Norway. They meet Ulfheim, a landowner and bear-hunter, who invites Maja to get up into the mountains with him. One of the guests at the hotel is a mysterious woman dressed in white and accompanied by a nurse. This turns out to be Irene. She has been married twice, and has been in a mental hospital. She seems to be in the grip of a “living death”, and in a painful confrontation she accuses Rubek of having ruined her life and stolen her soul. For his part he begs her to come back to him so that he can regain his creative power. The two of them go up into the mountains to become lovers again. Near the top they meet Maja and Ulfheim. A storm blows up, and Maja and Ulfheim go down the mountain into safety, while Irene and Rubek go on towards the peak, where they die in an avalanche.
In his Manipuri adaptation, Ratan Thiyam translates When We Dead Awaken as Ashibagee Eshei; Rubek becomes ‘Saktam Lakpa’ or sculptor; Irene becomes ‘Shaktam’ or image; Maja becomes Shakhenbi’ or beautiful women and Ulfheilm becomes ‘Lamlanba’ or stranger. He picks up the scenes from the three acts of the original play and interpolated without altering storyline and disrupting the continuity. To retain the sanctity of Ibsen, he does not alter the original dialogues. The play opens with Shaktam Lakpa listening a 1950s romantic hit song- Jati Koubi Shakhenbi of Ngangbam Nimai by playing gramophone, to get peace of mind, in his workplace where three snow- white sculptures are erected. His wife Shakhenbi making the Manipuri dolls interprets her life as doll. At some point of moment, Shaktam enters into Shaktam Lakpa’s mind and Lamlanba enters into Shakhenbi’s mind. Their entry is visualised through bubbles created on the stage. The boating scene in a lake with lotuses in full bloom created on the stage is quite amazing. Can it be visible on the stage that fishes are playing in the lake and birds are flying in the sky? Yes, Ratan Thiyam can do it. The last scene which Shaktam Lakpa and Shaktam are on the top of snow- clad mountain is very enchanting and memorable.
About the production, Ratan Thiyam said, “Inspired by the central idea of Ibsen’s last play When We Dead Awaken, this piece of work concentrates only in the thematic content. It does not follow the concept of either a realistic plot or normal structure.”
He stated that the performance was designed to express the internal entanglement of characters without distorting the original idea in a different plane with selected dialogues without a change from the original text.
He further said, “In this piece of my work, I just wanted to feel a different Ibsen with imagery, fantasy and ecstasy which he has created in this play – far away from the realistic conventional mould where the performance becomes more subtle, symbolic, suggestive and stylized according to the demand of the content.”
Differentiating the play from Ibsen’s earlier plays, Ratan Thiyam expressed, “When We Dead Awaken has symbolic and metaphysical points which are remarkably absent in the other plays.”
when we dead awakenWhen We Dead Awaken is the beginning of the fourth phase of the theatre journey of Ratan Thiyam where he picks up scripts of foreign playwrights.
In his first journey, he picked up Manipur plays- Leima Yenglingei Khunu Kaba, Shingen Indu, Uchek Langmeidong and so on; and introduced his theatre in the national level.
In his second journey, he picked up scripts from Mahabharata epic, Kalidas and other Indian playwrights, and put the Indian theatre in the international arena crossing the great Himalayas and the mighty Indian Ocean. He made Mahabharata trilogy- Chakravyuha, Karnabharam and Urubhangam. His 1984 production- Chakravyuha performed more than 100 times around the globe.
In his third journey, he picked up mythological /historical scripts using archaic Manipuri language- Hey Nungsibi Prithivi (My Earth, My Love), Chinglon Mapan Tampak Ama (Nine Hills One Valley) and Wahoudok (Prologue) depicting past beauties of the land of Manipur. He called it Manipur Trilogy.
His Chinglon Mapan Tampak Ama enacting the characters of Meitei Maichou Taret (seven Meitei wise men) was performed in United States of America at different places covering the whole breadth touching from the east coast to the west coast in October- November 2006.
Ratan Thiyam is the real ‘Ratna’ of India shining over the sky of North East India.
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