Review of "Kumbi Kathawa", staged by the Chitrasena Dance Company from October 21 to 24 at the Bishops College Auditorium
“Kumbi Kathawa”, the
latest production by the Chitrasena Dance Company, is both dance
and parable. It offers a message, one which (we're promised) remains pertinent for
our time. In the end, what is given to us transcends any
spatio-temporal limitations while being "aware" that serious parables
cannot be taken by children in heavy doses.
To distinguish between
cast and plot on the one hand and setup and props on the other, however, would be
doing a grave injustice to the play. The one blends well with the other,
bringing them together notwithstanding the fact that there are no dialogues or
words in the story. “Kumbi Kathawa” works not because of the story but because
of how well it comes together with every other element in the production. A clichéd
and vague way of putting it, admittedly. Still.
“Kumbi Kathawa” is
aimed at children, but it goes beyond anything that children's theatre can
conjure up. And not only because of its ending. The story (in a nutshell that
is) is a meditation on the timelessness of goodness, sustained even when cast
aside. The ants symbolise this aptly: chased away by a mosquito, they unite
together, mingle freely with other insects, get ready for a tea-party, and end
up surviving a flood and saving the mosquito from it.
For something that's
aimed primarily at kids, the Company's latest production offers subtlety and
that in a way which endears to them. The violent rainstorm and the saving of
the mosquito represent faith in goodness, pitted against evil and greed. But
Anjalika Melvani, who conceived the play and adapted it from Tatiana
Makarova's “The Brave Ant”, has frequently noted that she edited the ending and
opted for one where the ants save the mosquito.
Melvani does bring out
the “parable” in “Kumbi Kathawa” here, but the subtlety she evokes is what
infuses energy and verve into what she has done. The ants save the mosquito,
yes. But Melvani ends the play at the moment of rescue, like a freeze-frame.
There's no "afterward" there. With this, Melvani (whether or not she
intended it is for another debate altogether) points out that inasmuch as
forgiveness and compassion are virtues to be inculcated, they are virtues in
themselves. How so?
By leaving the
mosquito and ants on a tin, the producers portray compassion for what it should
be, free of celebration-frill and sober to the last. To reinforce this, Melvani
has kept away (mercifully, one might add) from inserting a sequence affirming amity
between mosquito and ant in a celebratory feast (or a tea-party, for that
matter), which would have injected feel-good joy and cheer into the audience
but which would also have lost out on the sobriety the ending gained and showed
us.
The story ends where
it should be, hence: at the point of rescue. Everything else is frill, and
compassion "wins", whether or not it wins in a way which erases
differentials between insects for good and whether or not it warrants frill and
celebration. To show all these would have been too easy. Fatally easy.
So much for the story.
What of its cast and props? First and foremost, being a play without words, it
relies on movement. But “Kumbi Kathawa” doesn't only contain movement: it also
contains elaborate costumes which could have constricted movement.
To keep to a
preconceived tempo as the story progresses was probably tough, but the cast
does ample justice to what's demanded of them. The ants in particular would
have demanded tremendous reserves of energy and exercise, but in the final cut
the child-actors playing them ensure that whatever they sweated out doesn't get
noticed by the audience. There's perfection here, but not of the laboured kind.
Forget this for one
moment, though. Forget the fact that the children had to wear what they did and
move according to a preconceived script. Forget that they would have undergone
rehearsal after rehearsal while keeping a brutal schedule, oscillating between
school and after-school and between after-school and theatre (something which
Heshma Wignaraja, who was artistic director of the production, highlighted when
she briefed sections of the media on it).
Even without
considering all these, the play was a success. But factor in what was pointed
out above, and you'll see how “Kumbi Kathawa”, even with decor and lighting and
those naturalistic sets (I liked the first sequence in particular, with an
elaborate set resembling life along grassland),
nothing would have worked without the cast. When the curtain came down, not
surprisingly, the cheers and claps were for real. They were also for the kids.
I've mentioned that one can't write about “Kumbi Kathawa” while distinguishing plot and
performance from props and setup. Everything comes together in the end, leaving
behind nothing in isolation. Viewed this way, the Chitrasena Dance Company's latest production (which has been staged twice before) won with subtlety: by making the audience (and especially the children) aware that while
there may be a great many ants around us, it takes one mosquito to ruin their harmony.
But when disaster
strikes and everyone gets together to avert it, it is the same mosquito who
will get saved. Whether or not it redeems itself and moves on, of course, is
not dwelt on in the play. Why? Because it shouldn't be dwelt on in the first
place. Compassion and forgiveness are inculcated, as they should be, but at the
end of the day we may never know how those whom we save will behave later on.
For the sake of humanity though, save them we must. Why? Because
that is what compassion should entail.
This
was the message that “Kumbi Kathawa” left me with. Powerful enough? Certainly.
Photos by: Luxmanan Nadarajah
Written for: Sunday Island, December 6 2015
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