5| Introducing the characters
Slowly an idea takes shape of how the different threads of a 19th century woman performer, a Dutch merchant, the Great Madras Famine and a British photographer can find a place in a new playscript inspired by, but also in response to, La Bayadère.
And thus a framework for a play emerges that turns around the oriental-elite gaze looking at what happens to a woman artist and other ordinary people in South India in the late 19th century. The name of the play is born: Pārvai or The Gaze. We like the idea of the gaze as a multifunctional phenomenon. The action of looking/staring/ observing/scrutinizing as well as being the object of that action incorporates multiple perspectives and is never unidirectional.
Rajagopal begins writing some of the Tamil (song) texts, while I am researching and co-writing passages of the script in English (the language in which I do most of my thinking) which we then together translate into Tamil. We want our woman performer to be at the centre of the play, as Nikiya-the-bayadère is in the ballet, endowing her, however, with greater agency and a vision of her own. We imagine her as a rural actress — Kamaladevi — even though we do not know whether women ever performed in this theatrical genre at that time. Kamaladevi rises from being an outcast(e) child-widow to becoming a famous lead performer in a local theatre company. We decide to situate Jacob Haafner a century later allowing him to meet Kamaladevi and fall in love with her.
Curiously, the characters we envisage and their quadrupole relationships, involving an artist-in-love, a male lover, a female rival lover and a Brahmin whose love is turned down, happen to be similar to that found in La Bayadère, but the ending of our play will be quite different. In addition Kamaladevi (Nikiya) and Jacob Haafner (Solor), there is the somewhat conniving foster mother of Kamaladevi (the unnamed ayah in the ballet) while Jacob has a man servant-cum-friend (who, in his travelogue is a slave he buys and sets free). The clever Brahmin, Bhuvanagiri (the High Brahmin in the ballet), basically looks after his own interests but also has an eye on Kamaladevi. Finally, princess Hamsatti becomes Quintina, the ambitious and arrogant woman photographer and sister of the British Governor. She, too, is the result of our imagination as we could not find any references to women photographers in late 19th century India, even though Western women from elite backgrounds are known to have been travellers and explorers during this time period. And we add Kandasami Mudaliyar, a rich merchant who works hand-in-glove with the British government. Because the play is also about an emerging global business network across oceans that has transformed Indian society and the world.
And thus a framework for a play emerges that foregrounds the life and love of Kamaladevi, coolies and other ordinary people in South India during the time of the Great Madras Famine. The locals include the palanquin bearers of Jacob Haafner, his servant, gaunt migrants on the beach of Pulicat, labourers involved in the construction of Kandasami’s grandiose temple and other village people who love seeing a good Kuttu performance. Even though Kamaladevi is as much a product of fantasy as the bayadère is, by bringing her alive on the stage we intend to look at South Indian society bottom-up. Kamaladevi is our counterpoint to the fetishised and sexualized female oriental performer found in 19th century ballets and operas in Europe.
By creating a place for ordinary people in the play — and allowing their gaze to enter the story —we hope to enrich, compliment and round out the social picture of late 19th century India. This picture tends to focus on the actions and perceptions of the colonial administration, missionaries and indigenous elites. The voices of the ‘natives’ mostly go unheard, while their culture expressions are trivialised or ridiculed as unsophisticated and barbaric.