The blame game never ends...
The cast of Frayn’s play Copenhagen, that was staged in the City, during the closing ceremony of the Bonjour India Festival, said that they were terrified because they were dealing with such an intense and complicated subject.
There was an enormous amount of research that went into the theme of the play. “You would notice that the script has no instructions on it directing the actor to stand or sit or say in an angry voice... The actors do it all by themselves. Some lines are said with anger, some others with emotion,” explains Prakash Belwadi who plays the role of Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate.
The play speculates on what might have transpired during a meeting between Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in September 1941, at the height of the German advance into Russia and just three months before America’s entry into the war.
The play ponders the possible reasons for Heisenberg’s visit, linking them to the failure of the Germans to develop the bomb. “The play required the characters to have a comprehensive understanding of the past and its repercussions on the future. I didn’t want to act in it but the character demanded someone strong so I had to take it up,” explains Prakash.
The play revolves around the relationship between people. “That people are quick to hate another. The reasons could be impulsive or even intuitive but we are quick to blame one another,” says Prakash. There are emotionally surcharged scenes in the play, especially when Smitha Chakravarthy who plays Margerette Bohr says that the bomb will come alive in every child, man and woman.
That one should think who one really is, what one is doing and where one is headed, is the crux of the play. That nations do not need bombs to protect themselves is something that ran through and through the play.
Prakash Belawadi plays Niel's Bohr, Balaji Manohar as Heisenberg and Smitha Chakravarthyis Margerette Bohr.
DHNS
