THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the early nineties, during the heady days when liberalisation shocked the living daylights out of Licence Raj, Kavalam Narayana Panicker staged Bhasa’s Sanskrit play ‘Urubhangam’ at the National School of Drama. Duryodhana, after his thighs are crushed by Bhima’s mace, enters the stage dancing to a strange blood-curdling rhythm. The audience, made up of some of the biggest names in Indian theatre, was stunned. They were used to seeing the tragic Duryodhana, hit below the waist by an unscrupulous Bhima, crawling onto the stage like a battered snake. Sacrilege!
The very next day a leading art magazine asked: “How could anyone with shattered thigh bones walk, leave alone jump and dance?” Kavalam’s arrogant retort cut the realistic theatre movement to size, and soon became the slogan of a bold new breed of theatre activists. “If someone has his thighs broken, he should be taken to a hospital and not dragged onto a stage. But an actor on stage pretending to show he has a broken thigh can do anything he wants. You only have to make the people feel his pain.”
Murali, Kadammanitta and Kavalam. (Photo: DC)
This was why Kavalam’s great contemporary and friend G Sankara Pillai described him as an “expressionist”. He even called him the Vincent Van Gogh of Indian Theatre. And then as an aside, he had said: “Kavalam has the same lean look as Van Gogh but he is not even in the least as grim as the Dutch artist. His ‘betel leaf’-red smile brings to life all the innocence of the land in which we live.”
Even here in his own state, Kavalam’s early plays elicited the same shudder. ‘Sakshi’, a play that he wrote in the early 70s, was ripped apart by critics.
Kavalam himself had said that people just couldn’t sit through the experience. But he soldiered on and struck gold with ‘Daivathar’, a clairvoyant take on ‘godmen’. After watching ‘Daivathar’ when it was staged for the first time, Sankara Pillai was speechless. “C N Sreekantan Nair, myself and Kavalam had set out in search of theatre. And in the end, it was Kavalam who discovered it,” Pillai had famously said. The success of ‘Daivathar’ came at a time when brilliant performers like Bharat Gopy were becoming increasingly disillusioned with Sankara Pillai’s western influences.
Kavalam crosses a bridge on way to his home in Kavalam. (Photo: DC)
Kavalam took the esoteric but detailed movements of classical arts like kathakali and koodiyattom, and also of the ritual arts theyyam and padayani, and married them with native songs and rhythms of farming-related activities that wafted into his ancestral house from the paddy lands right outside. The union first looked terribly out of place, even a bit weird, but over the years it came to be seen as ideal, just how things should be. He instinctively knew that the roots of theatre could be found not just in classical and Hellenestic Greece but also in the paddy swamps of his hometown.
Kavalam’s experiments reached its peak with ‘Avanavankadamba’ in 1976. Inspired by a poem by Ayyappa Panicker, the play was directed by G Aravindan. Kavalam broke free of all conventions. “It was in ‘Avanavan Katamba’ that I took the final and firm decision to do away with the curtain. Till then I was hesitant. With this play, the theatre was made one with nature,” Kavalam had said.
Although his land took time to warm up to his genius, there were people in other parts of the country fascinated by his work. It was Madhya Pradesh culture secretary Ashok Vajpayee, after watching ‘Ottayan’, who asked Kavalam to do a Sanskrit play. Then, Kavalam had translated Bhasa’s ‘Madhyamavyayogam’ into Malayalam. But Vajpayee wanted him to stage the play in Sanskrit. And in 1978, Kavalam turned director for the first time, staging ‘Madhyamavyayogam’ at the prestigious Kalidas Samaroh in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.
He did four other Bhasa plays and also Kalidasa classics like Shakuntalam’, ‘Vikramurvasheeyam’ and ‘Malavikagnimithram’. But even as his legend grew, setbacks trailed him like a curse. The actors who emerged out of his indigenous theatre ‘Thanathunatakavedi’, including Nedumudi Venu, deserted him. There was a time when aspiring film actors had seen ‘Thiruvarangu’ and later ‘Sopanam’ as their gateway to the world of cinema.
But the lean, tender-leaf frame clothed an iron heart. He had once refused to include even Nedumudi Venu in a play after the actor had left a play midway to act in a film. In those long years of struggle, Kavalam it seems had no time to make a life for himself. This great dramatist who evolved perhaps the most unique theatre movement in the world could build a house for himself only after he was 65.
