Theatre should lead to social action: Veteran Kannada actor Laxmi Chandrasekhar

Chandrasekhar's latest solo play will be performed on Thursday evening at Bangalore International Centre and the Kannada version of the play is written by Uday Itagi.

Bengaluru: For veteran Kannada actor and theatre personality Laxmi Chandrasekhar, her art form should lead to social action.

"'This is something I learned during my days with Samudaya Theatre Company (the theatre group started by another theatre veteran Prasanna, who, among others, used street skits to challenge Indira Gandhi during Emergency). When I started my own theatre company, Kriyative, I continued with the same philosophy. All the plays we choose have some kind of social relevance," Chandrasekhar told PTI.

Chandrasekhar's latest solo play, produced by her theatre company 'Shakespeare's Wife' will be performed on Thursday evening at Bangalore International Centre. The Kannada version of the play is written by Uday Itagi.

As a woman, Chandrasekhar is happy that her solo play throws new light on Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's much maligned wife.

"Most Shakespearean scholars say that any biography of Shakespeare has less than 5 per cent truth in it, because the only things we know about Shakespeare are a few dates. This whole story about Anna being a shrew is built on sheer guesses. Our play is based on the research done by German Greer. So, we can say our play has more than 5 per cent truth," said Chandrasekhar, who has acted has acted in more than 10 Kannada films, including critically acclaimed Avasthe (1987), S.P.Sangliyana Part 2 (1990) and Atithi (2002).

Although Chandrasekhar says it is easier to represent Shakespeare in English than in Kannada, Shakespeare's Wife had a unique turn of events – she came across the Kannada version first.

"Uday got in touch with me on Facebook with his version of Anna Hathaway, because he had seen my solo plays," said Chandrasekhar.

The actor-director says like most people studying Shakespeare, she too assumed that Shakespeare's wicked women characters, like Lady Macbeth, have been modelled after his wife. But Uday's play made her read up on Anna, she said.

"I was able to relate to his play immediately. My biggest grouse with Shakespeare was that even when he brings in strong women characters, they somehow fizzle out in the end. Uday's play gave me an opportunity to show Anna, a woman from Shakespearean times, in a very different light," said Chandrasekhar.

"But the more she read about Anna, the more she realised that even Uday's play was not enough. 'It revolved around her but didn’t bring her out as a strong woman with an identity of her own," Chandrasekhar said.

"Her search for a clearer picture of Anna leads her to Greer's book on her, Shakespeare's Wife. That book lets you see her story in a totally different light. So, after adding things into what we already had, we're able to do a play which represented Anna as a strong woman who lived alone for 30 years, deserted by her husband, bringing up his three children by herself."

"That must not have been easy, and it was unfair that a woman of her calibre should be represented the way she had been throughout centuries. Our Shakespeare's Wife takes Anna out of that rut," said Chandrasekhar.

Her theatre company has done plays with varying themes – for instance, one of the plays Carbon Cake deals directly with the problem of carbon emission and what we can do to help reduce carbon emission.

Feminist themes have a special place in her heart, agrees Chandrasekhar, mostly because for a long time, women in theatre had to be content with 'furniture roles'.

"Like a house needs furniture, a play needs a few women characters, but they're not necessarily involved in the main struggle. Naturally, I wanted to do plays where the woman was at the centre," she said.

With the success of her first solo play, 'Hennallave', which was a tribute to women and their persistence, her will to find more strong women characters only strengthened, said the recipient of the 2014 Karnataka Nataka Academy Award.

"Hennallave was also translated in English as Just a Women. I put together characters from various sources – from mythology, from folklore and from present day happenings – to show how a woman has been exploited through the ages and how she's always fought against it. The success of that play encouraged me to do more solo performances like that"' said Chandrasekhar.

The veteran actor is also aware that to get across socially relevant themes to the intended audience, it is important to wrap them in entertainment.

"People respond well to comic situations. I am not talking about below the belt kind of jokes. The kind of situations that can also have a useful message. A social satire or a political satire, for instance, is something that the entire family could enjoy as well as reflect on the things that were said – whether it is about family values or whether about the political situation. This is important, and this is what Kriyative tries to achieve," said Chandrasekhar.