Theatre in Madras

CHENNAI: Tamil literary culture was clear in demarcation between Iyal, Isai and Natakam (prose, poetry and drama).

Therukoothu, a form of Tamil musical all-night theatre, became a thriving form of public entertainment in the late 19th century. But organised theatre was an urban phenomenon copied from Parsi theatre when, with the onset of railways, Bombay theatre companies frequented Madras.

The Parsi theatre was a popular hybrid form, blending European stagecraft with Indian mythology.

Tamil troupes crossed the linguistic, social, and cultural boundaries, and soon imitated the highly-organised Parsi troupes in genres of tales and songs, and drama duration.

Till the onset of talkies, it was the primary source of visual entertainment in the Presidency.

Gandhi watched a Hari Chandra play in Victoria Public Hall; but no one knew, as he was not the Mahatma yet.

Three chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, CN Annadurai, M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran cut their teeth in public life through drama stages.

THE SAVIOUR OF REPUTATIONS

The mass hysteria among Tamil audiences over silver screen heroes today belies how early theatre actors were treated. In those days, they were treated with contempt and were derisively called Koothadis. They were not given houses on rent, family audiences were kept well away from their performances, and they were even accused of kidnapping children.

It required someone to resuscitate Tamil theatre and Pammal Sambandam Mudaliar, a lawyer and later a judge, was that messiah. With a single-minded focus, he meticulously planned the retrieval of the reputation. He chose stories by masters of the craft such as William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen, staged these plays in the most popular building in Madras named after the Queen, the Victoria Public Hall, and insisted that only graduates — then a rare tribe — would be taken as actors. Even the curtains had the University Senate House picture embroidered on it. The branding exercise was a veritable success: the elites among the natives thronged his plays, and the Victoria Hall ground was where one could see the biggest assembly of cars owned by Indians.

THE BIRTH OF AN EMPEROR

In 1945, Chandramohan or Sivaji Kanda Hindu Rajiyam written by Annadurai was to premiere at the 7th Self-Respect Conference, with Anna himself playing the role of Sivaji’s guru Khaga Bhatta, while MGR, then a struggling extra actor in talkies, was offered the Maratha emperor’s role. But when given a 90-page script to memorise, MGR was overwhelmed by the long dialogues. Just days before the play’s debut, he backed out.

Facing a crisis, Anna decided to try out Villupuram Ganesan, a 17-year-old known for female roles and was living with him doing chores. Just six hours later, the boy learnt the script by heart. Soon, the costume stitched for the stout MGR was altered to fit the frail teenager. Impressed by his performance, Periyar who presided over the play declared, “From today, you are Sivaji Ganesan!” A star was born.

THE CHALLENGE OF MANOHAR

Cinema, with technology enabling it to offer superb visuals, ate into the popularity of theatre. But not everyone was willing to take it lying, and instead challenged the new medium with unusual storylines, captivating titles, grand props and special effects.

Among those who led the resistance was RS Manohar, who stunned the audience using a papier-mache elephant (with two actors inside) that ambled onto the stage and Pushpak Viman that flew across the stage using imperceptible wires. All these understandably involved substantial investments. At one point, Manohar had 17 technicians and had to hire three trucks or an entire coach of goods train to transport the props.

Among those left spellbound by the performance was Bombay theatre celebrity and adman Bharat Dabholkar (who fashioned the Amul series of catchy advertisements) who watched Manohar’s drama on Ravana. The two collaborated on an original English play, Last Tango in Heaven, about the mayhem in heaven after the unexpected arrival of a politician.

BRITISH AMATEUR THEATRE

Deployed in a faraway land with harsh weather and alien culture, British officers and their wives sought solace in theatre. But European theatre groups seldom visited Madras, prompting them to create their drama clubs. Frequently found in the audience was George Joachim Goschen, 2nd Viscount, the then Madras Governor and later Viceroy. Plays were also staged in Ooty where the British retired to in the summer.

PLAYS SCRIPTED TO FIGHT TRIAL

When comedian NSK Krishnan was arrested for the murder of blackmailer Lakshmikanthan, the trial was long-drawn. Unlike his co-accused, MK Thyagaraja Bagavathar, NSK’s pockets were usually empty. A habitual spendthrift, he would fritter away his wealth on friends and family, leaving no money for legal expenses. The trial expenses were managed by his strong-willed wife, TA Mathuram, a comedy star herself, who came out of a sabbatical and launched a troupe named NSK Nataka Sabha. She staged dramas written and acted by SV Sahasranamam and used the money earned to fight the case. So successful were her plays that many were made into films. One of them, Payithiyakaran, was about to be filmed with MGR as her hero. But in the retrial ordered by the Privy Council in London, Krishnan was acquitted and the story was rewritten giving him a role. In the process, Mathuram got a double role.

WHEN BOYS PLAYED GIRL ROLES

The three important roles in a Tamil drama were the Raja part, Kalla part and Sthree part (or the king, villain and heroine). But women rarely acted, and it was men who played those roles. The first speaking role that MGR bagged was that of Uttara, while Sivaji was seen playing Noor Jehan when he was offered his first film chance.

E Krishna Iyer, who essayed female roles in Pammal Sambandam Mudaliar’s plays, became so involved that he wanted to learn a traditional dance to enhance his performance as a heroine. He approached devadasi Gowri Amma and learnt Sadhirattam, the temple dance. This in turn gave a major fillip to this dance form when he later became the secretary of the Music Academy and propagated this as Bharatanatyam.

SABARIMALA GETS A PUSH AMONG TN BELIEVERS

There are a large number of Ayyappa devotees in Tamil Nadu, which, however, is a recent phenomenon. A century ago, only those from the State of Travancore used to undertake the pilgrimage to the Sabarimala temple located in the middle of the inaccessible forest.

What led to its popularity in Tamil Nadu is Nawab Rajamanickam’s play on Lord Ayyappa. Nawab created Ayyappa Sarithiram, a play with realistic cardboard tigers that invaded the stage, which the audience loved. Another reason was Nambiar, the ace villain in those days, who acted in that play and became an ardent Ayyappa devotee and visited the temple without break for 65 years. He often took a large entourage with him, which once included Amitabh Bachchan.

TALKIES, THE THEATRE KILLER

In the initial days of cinema as a medium, theatres had nothing to worry about. In those days, films were just another version of the play: actors performed before a static camera fixed in front of the stage. But those were silent films, with the black and white visuals being explained by a narrator within the closed and stuffy confines of a thatched auditorium. In comparison, the theatre was colourful and rich in music and dance. However, the advent of talkies in 1931 dealt a death blow to Tamil theatre. Its best actors and technicians moved over to greener pastures. The same tale was now told in a better format and its ability to screen repeatedly at minimal cost made it a mass entertainment.

THE AMATEURS

Other than the professional theatre groups, there also were creative people who were interested in performing on stage but were gainfully employed, which stopped them from considering theatre as a full-time career. Thus, Madras always had energetic amateur theatre groups (both in Tamil and English) run by college-educated and well-employed men, whose works were different from regular theatre and attracted audiences just like them.

K Balachander wrote Major Chandrakanth as an English play for the AG’s office staff club. Later, it would be filmed in several languages. Cho Ramaswamy laced his works with highly provocative political statements about the prevailing political situation.

Another noted amateur group was UAA started by YGP in 1952. Many future actors cut their teeth here, a long list that includes late chief minister J Jayalalithaa. The Madras Players were a prominent English group, operating out of the circular Museum theatre.

DRAMA MAKING WAVES

There used to be a time when plays were recorded on gramophone records and sold. They were popular across the Presidency. Later came the radio age, which prompted playwrights to script dramas suiting the new medium – it had to have stronger scripts due to the absence of visuals. This period also saw several one-act plays, perhaps due to the lowering attention span of the audience.

Kalki had initially written Sivakamiyin Sabatham as a radio play, but without its main villain character, Naganandhi, a monk and the twin brother of Chalukya king Pulikesi. Kalki later rewrote it as the novel and serialised it. S Balachander’s famous work Andha Naal was originally written as a radio play but was rejected by All India Radio.

MITHRAN AND THE GEOMETRY OF STAGE

Mithran Devanesan, son of a college principal, was halfway through his medical education when he threw it away for a career in theatre. He trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and his love for Shakespeare has influenced all his work. When joined the Madras Players in 1974, stage sweeping was his first job. But he went on to become one of India’s top English theatre directors, with over 150 plays to his credit. Mithran knew that a director has much to focus on, script, acting, the audience he caters to, etc. But he was also concerned about the geometry of the stage, the space within which the action happens. Even when he was not the director, his wonderful sets and light designs worked for other stage productions as well. He also did work for children’s productions, directing and stage-managing pantomimes.

THE TKS BROTHERS Among the stars of the theatre

THE TKS BROTHERS Among the stars of the theatre scene in Madras were the siblings collectively called TKS Brothers – TK Shanmugam and his brothers Sankaran, Muthusamy and Bagavathy. Among Shanmugam’s most famous roles was that of the Tamil poetess Avvaiyar, which gave him the honorific Avvai Shanmugam. In his honour, the government named the road perpendicular to Avviyar statue after him. The TKS Brothers had a close association with both the Communist and Dravidian movements. Shanmugam wrote the foreword for Annadurai’s first novel, Kumasthavin Magal. However, Periyar organised boycotts of Shanmugam’s religion-oriented dramas, causing a law and order situation. TKS used Bharathi’s songs in his play and film, Bilhanan, triggering a sharp debate on intellectual property rights, which finally ended with the nationalisation of Bharathi’s poetry.