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Director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry on her upcoming theatre show
Updated On: 29 January, 2023 12:36 PM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty
In a bold retelling of Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry explores a heroine who is not afraid of her sexuality as she seeks an answer to the age-old question: Are we more than our physical selves?
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Cast members at a rehearsal in Chandhigarh. Girish Karnad wrote Hayavadana in 1971 in Kannada. It’s a two-act play which presents the story of two friends Devdutta and Kaplia, and their love interest Padmini
Girish Karnad came at a time in Indian theatre when there was a search for identity,” observes theatre director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, who is behind a new production of Karnad’s classic text Hayavadana. “I think he represents a search for what it means to be a playwright who was rooted in a certain culture and value system and within that also, he was the first modernist.”
The play tells the story of two friends—Devadatta and Kapila—in love with Padmini. While Devadatta and Padmini get married, all three of them live together until an unfortunate event leads to swapping of their heads on each other’s bodies, putting Padmini in the spot—who is her husband now, the head that belongs to Devadatta or his body that fathered her child? Chowdhry admits that the play’s combination of modernity and contemporaneity with tradition, symbolism and myths of the past dovetailing into a cohesive text is challenging for any director.
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