A play written in 1975 by Mahesh Elkunchwar has been revived by director Aniruddha Khutwad in 2017. When the playwright labelled it unfair and uni-dimensional, why is a new director attracted to the script?
A scene from Party, directed by Aniruddha Khutwad, which playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar long ago labeled as his ‘simplistic creation’. PIC/MANDAR TANNU
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A socialite's bash in 2017 Mumbai will wear a vibe that a party thrown in the 1975 Bombay will not have. The gossip of the moment will vary, the social etiquette will differ. But, will artists and playwrights in both assemblies not critique the government of the day over a drink?
Forty-seven-year-old theater director, an alumnus of the National School of Drama, Aniruddha Khutwad feels glitterati parties are the accurate barometers for sensing contemporary tensions. That's why he has revived the play Party (celebrated playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar's not-so-feted 1975 creation) which is currently doing the rounds in Pune and is set to take on a wider tour of Mumbai and other metros. Retaining Elkunchwar's real time progression of a felicitation set in the '70s, Khutwad focuses on the political baggage of 11 characters which have opinions about a colleague who doesn't appear on stage but is involved in a left-leaning armed social movement. The absent character troubled Khutwad. He thought what if a writer in today's Mumbai espouses a social cause, will that spell an end of his or her art practice?
Khutwad decided to explore the answer by staging the play in the original language, Marathi, without being impacted by past productions in Hindi, English and Bengali.
The English Party by Kolkata group Neev was staged in 2008 and directed by Udita Chakraborty. It integrated the armed clashes of Singur and Nandigram in the script
The very first Party was the Marathi production of director Amol Palekar in 1976, an Emergency year in India when private spaces witnessed hushed but acrimonious debates on state censorship. It was also "a slimmer version of a verbose play." Insiders claim that an upset Elkunchwar preferred not to come for the show after watching the rehearsal. The English Party was launched as late as 2008 by the Kolkata group Neev whose director Udita Chakraborty integrated the armed clashes of Singur and Nandigram in the script. Director Sohag Sen first directed the Bengali version (Ensemble group, 1990), inserting a dance sequence and a chess game; and then mounted a Hindi production with NSD students in 2014. Despite doing the play at different points, she recalls Party as "effectively showing how people are used (and thrown) in a circuit." Party's celluloid version (Govind Nihalani, 1984) featured thespian Vijaya Mehta (director of many Elkunchwar plays like Wada Chirebandi) as the hostess inviting the cognoscenti.
A scene from Sohag Sen's Bengali production of Party in 1990.
Khutwad has retained it as a period play, denoting the seventies through Sameer Dublay's music and living room-outer portico props. Undeterred by the multiple perspectives about Party, he owns up his choice of a realistic urban play. "Party pinpoints pretenses to sophistication that characterise the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, fake, hypocritical responses have become more evident. So often the online lives of well-known artists stand in sharp contrast with what they say in private."
Khutwad is an ever-travelling director who has conducted workshops at theatre institutes in Hyderabad, Bhopal, Goa, and Ladakh; he teaches at the NSD as well as the Film and Television Institute; he works closely with theatre groups from the North East. And he feels Party adds another dimension to the themes he has handled. His preference become even more puzzling when playwright Elkunchwar, now 78, says it is a creation of his angry young man days, (he said to this columnist he has "lost interest in Party") when he sat in judgment as an outsider (he hails from Nagpur and prefers it over Mumbai). The second volume of his collected English plays (Oxford, 2010), quotes Elkunchwar on why he distances himself from Party.
After Elkunchwar labels Party simplistic, playwright Champra Deshpande has devoted good enough time (in an extensive essay-like FB post) on his reservations about Party's inadequacy. Deshpande ridicules the awkward combination of three writers - the crass commercial, the young emerging, and the predictable set-in-his-ways. "On his way to Delhi to collect his award, the predictable writer's train takes an unscheduled stop in the jungle and that gives him a glimpse of India's s poverty, which makes him question his art in a party." Deshpande pokes fun at Party and then plays safe by stating that a weightier production may help in etching some existential dilemmas. Elkunchwar's answer to Deshpande makes the episode even funnier: "I wrote the play at the age of 32, with a limited understanding of the world. I wasn't wise enough then. Not that I have gained now," he asks younger theatre practitioners as to why they don't find Party time warped.
Kolkata-based Pradip Mitra, an actor in the English cast, who has fond memories of performing Party in London and around, justifies Khutwad's urge to redo the play. "The machinations in the arts may have taken new shapes and forms, but how different can the power play and antagonism be in successive years? The entertainment industry runs on the same seed elements."
Neera Adarkar, who played the vulnerable but intense unwed mother in Palekar's Party, admires Khutwad for his choice. "Indians have definitely moved on. Few would take the risk of light party chatter about artists' involvement in tribal rights' activism. Artists are wary of smartphones and other devices that can jeopardize their professional status. They think twice before airing political views. In such a super cautious environment, if a young director sticks his neck out to project inconvenient issues, the urge must be respected."
Another actress who essayed a key role in the 1976 production, Chitra Palekar, reread the play for giving her response to what Party signifies now.
"The playwright wanted to raise genuine issues, which I could relate to at that age and stage, but today's theatre goer cannot relate to his cardboard characters. Who speaks the manifesto-like language, like they do in Party, whether communists or capitalists?"
While theatre persons aired their misgivings about Party, the play's first director Amol Palekar had a non-reaction. "I am not sure if I want to devote time to some Khutwad's directorial attempt. My quote will be a few lines in your column, whereas mine was the original Party staging after Mahesh read it out to me." That can be called a parting shot!
Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. You can reach her at sumedha.raikar@gmail.com
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