Veteran actor-director to mark 50 years in theatre by revisiting his plays

It was in 1969 that PC Ramakrishna began his journey in the world of theatre by playing an actor in an adaptation of American playwright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The play, which was staged by theatre group The Madras Players, was only a beginning for Ramakrishna, who went ahead to act in over 150 plays and also directed a few plays since then. Marking his 50th year in the field of drama, the theatre company is staging Retrospective, so as to revisit three of the successful plays, which were directed by the theatre veteran.

“Of the 50 years that I have spent in theatre so far, about 40 years were as an actor. The three plays that we will be staging are those that I had directed in the past and are close to me. I turned into a director for the first time in 2012 with the play Water, an English adaptation of (Tamil theatre personality) Komal Swaminathan’s play, Thanneer Thanneer, which is about a water-starved village in Tamil Nadu. I was very fascinated by the powerful narrative, which is relevant even in the current day, which made me want to present it to the audience,” recalls 74-year-old Ramakrishna, who has been associated with The Madras Players as an actor, director and administrator throughout these 50 years. Ever since the 1980s, he began pushing for Indian writings and themes to be highlighted through theatre.

Apart from Water, the other two dramas that will be performed are Chudamani, which was directed by Ramakrishna in 2016 based on seven short stories by Tamil writer R Chudamani, and Trinity, a play first staged in 2018 with live music dramatised from Tamil stories on Carnatic musicians Saint Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Sastri.

“Chudamani is my tribute to women, who made statements far ahead of their time. And, as a mridangam player myself, Trinity is close to me since it has live Carnatic music. The play Water, on the other hand, talks of a village that struggles for water for five years, a situation that is no different from the one we’re currently facing. I realised that it is a similar condition that the city has been witnessing since the 2015 floods. All the three plays belong to different genres, but are immensely moving subjects,” elaborates Ramakrishna.

His half a century of work in theatre has been like being on a rollercoaster, he admits. “Acting is what got me into theatre. Since I also read a lot, I find Tamil writings that I want to dramatise and present on stage. I think I’ve developed that skill of finding subjects through experience,” he remarks.