8| The Playscript
In August 2023 we have a first reading of the playscript of Pārvai. Presenting something that evolved from our imagination put into songs and words, a playscript that continues to evolve, for the first time to an audience of listeners both exciting and nerve-racking. However, this being a play that sits outside Kattaikkuttu’s conventional repertory of epic and mythological stories, we wanted to test also whether the script ‘works’. We used actual descriptions from Jacob Haafner’s travelogue to fill in the family histories of Kamaladevi (alias Mamia) and Jacob himself. The two of them share similar experiences of having been orphaned and having to fend for themselves at a young age. Exchanging these experiences is the beginning of their romance.
We struggled most with the plays in the play. The Gaze being about a women performer and her life on and off the stage features two of them. We wanted these plays to capture different aspects of Kamaladevi as a person and a principal actress. After the first reading we change the first play in the play to a scene from Rajagopal’s RamaRavana. Herein Kamaladevi plays the role of the beautiful Surpanakha who expresses her desire for Lakshmana explicitly, something that a woman is not supposed to do. We could not find a good match for the second play in the play so finally Rajagopal decided to write one himself. It features Neelambal, a self-contained, strong woman-devotee. Neelambal uses her art to reveal the unscrupulous wheeling and dealing of those in power inviting people to think about the reasons underlying the famine.
Intertwined with the love blossoming between Kamaladevi and Jacob Haafner — a love that communicates itself primarily through the gaze — is the story of the famine and how it affects the people of Pulicat and beyond. Watching the story of Neelambal in the second play in the play, the spectators mistake — or perhaps begin to realize — what is going on in the play with their own reality. Getting increasingly irritated, they finally get on the stage to revolt. They take Kandasami Mudaliyar and his wife, their body-guard Dinadayalan, Bhuvanagiri, Quintina and Jacob Haafner hostage. In the struggle that ensues Dinadayalan receives a blow and dies on the spot. Jacob’s servant Munusami smartly manages to entangle his master from the brawl.
Men and women demand to be paid their coolie. And they want access to the rice that Mudaliyar certainly must have hidden somewhere. Kamaladevi, still in the theatrical costume of Neelambal, intervenes telling the people there is no need to fight. Kandasami Mudaliyar pretends not to know or own anything. Enraged by his behaviour Jacob Haafner then offers Kamaladevi and the people to have the rice he has kept ready for shipping on the quay of Madras to be brought back to alleviate their hunger. Quintina is rescued but before leaving for Madras tells Kamaladevi to tell Jacob Haafner that she is in love with him. She warns Kamaladevi that she, a lowly actress, should not try to come in between them.
When everybody has left Jacob finds Kamaladevi silent, alone and depressed. He wonders why she is not happy now that the people will be fed. What is it that troubles her? She conveys Quintina’s message which Jacob dismisses immediately as ‘crazy’. Kamaladevi struggles with her own confusing feelings of desire and social duty, which she can express so well on the stage but not in real life. Testing the waters, Jacob then discloses that he is in love with someone. He described her as ‘an expert in the arts, extremely beautiful, having cast her net of love, erased the difference between white and black, eager to protect the people….. ‘ Absorbed in each other’s gaze, it takes clever Munusami a moment before he realized that this woman must be Kamaladevi.
Now that things are falling into place and the script is reaching a more or less definite form, I prepare an English translation. Kattaikkuttu Ambassador, academic, dramaturg and good friend Rustom Bharucha reads the English translation and provides some really useful feedback. In his opinion, Jacob Haafner’s anti-colonial stance can be more prominent while he also feels that our motivation to call the play The Gaze requires some further contextualization. And that is exactly what we try to do through this series of blogs. Yet, there remain still other many things think about, such as costumes and props.