JOIN USAn evening of excerpts from the play Pushkin’s Last Poem by Achala Moulik was staged by the International Music and Arts Society at the Alliance Francaise recently.
The play, which was written to commemorate the 200th birth anniversary of Pushkin, revolves around Marya Raevsky and Alexander Pushkin and their star crossed love.
Moulik says, “I was talking to my husband and said, ‘you know, nobody knows about this great love between Marya and Pushkin’ and he made me write it.”
The Russians are known for their deceptively simple style of writing which hides within it many layers, only spotted by the discerning. This play, too, has that quality. Clocked in the garb of a historic love story, the play raises deeply philosophical question and awakens emotional curiosity.
Marya is in love with the revolutionary Pushkin. Pushkin places Marya on a Petrarchan pedestal. Prince Sergey Volkonsky’s selfless devotion to Marya, the object of his affection and to Pushkin, his ideological hero completes the triangle.
Achala Moulik’s play examines many themes. The most interesting is of identity. Is Pushkin, the valiant iconoclast who unites the common Russians, or is he the ‘comical court jester’ as the Tsar Nikolas sees him?
The play also investigates the idea of the ‘inspiration’. Pushkin is inspired by Marya who is charmed by the legend of Sita. Pushkin awakens Russians.
But since Marya can’t keep her promise and Pushkin isn’t the valiant braveheart he’s thought of being, one begins to wonder: are we inspired by what is or does the inspiration exists because our imagination gave it life?
The play was in the readers’ theatre format. The actors read from the script while on stage. And in keeping with the genre, the actors’ costumes weren’t elaborate; the women wore red and the men wore blue.
With minimal lighting and effect, the success of the production can be clearly credited to the actors. Since the holding of the script is such an impediment to the process of willing suspension of disbelief, the actors voice becomes their instrument.
Asked to comment about this format of theatre, Udai Matthen who, played the role of Pushkin said, “The pressure of having to remember your lines is off. The script acts as a cushion. Leaving for more vocal improvisation”. Picking up from where her son left, Nirmala Matthen who played Marya said, “It requires lesser rehearsal time.”