8| The Playscript
In August 2023 we have a first reading of the playscript of Pārvai. Publicly presenting for the first time something that evolved from our imagination, now put into songs and words, a playscript that continues to evolve, is 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 whether the script ‘works’, not only for us, but also for others. We used actual descriptions from Jacob Haafner’s travelogue to fill in the family histories of Kamaladevi (alias Mamia) and Jacob. Both share a similar experience of having been orphaned and having had 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. Being about a women performer and her life on and off the stage, The Gaze 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, Rajagopal changed the first play in the play to a scene from his RamaRavana. Herein Kamaladevi plays the role of the beautiful Surpanakha who openly expresses her desire for Lakshmana, something that a woman is not supposed to do. We could not find an existing play or scene for the second play-in-the-play, which would highlight Kamaladevi’s other side of asceticism, cleverness and compassion. Rajagopal decides he needs to write an original one that matches his ideas. The short play 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 worked up, they finally get on the stage and 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. Kandasami Mudaliyar pretends not to know or own anything. Kamaladevi, still in the theatrical costume of Neelambal, tries to pacify the famished villagers. However, Jacob Haafner, enraged by Kandasami Mudaliyar's lack of compassion and stinginess, offers to have the rice he has kept ready for shipping on the quay of Madras brought back to alleviate their hunger. On Neelambal’s instigation, the villagers release Quintina. But before leaving for Madras, she takes Kamaladevi aside to warn her she, a lowly actress, should not come in between her and Jacob Haafner, whom she desires.
When everybody has left Jacob finds Kamaladevi silent, alone and depressed. He wonders why she cannot rejoice now that her people are fed. What is it that troubles her? She conveys Quintina’s message, which Jacob dismisses immediately as ‘crazy’. Kamaladevi is an expert in expressing feelings of desire, love, devotion and social duty on the stage, but in her own life she struggles to do so. Testing the waters, Jacob discloses that he is in love with a unique woman. 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 realizes that this woman must be Kamaladevi.
Things are falling into place and the script is reaching a more or less definite form. I prepare an English translation. Scholar-dramaturg and good friend Rustom Bharucha reads the English translation and provides 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 to think about, such as costumes and props.