I grew up a rebel, demanding convincing for believing. No one knew, including myself, that deep down I was the most obedient student wanting to believe in the possibility of everything. And so, it happened once, at rehearsal, I let out a sigh. Not relief, frustration. And the director said, “there, She came. It is not you. She came. Hold on to her!.” I laughed saying that would make anyone insane. I was playing five characters in continuum for the play and laughed at the idea of holding onto five characters – being possessed by five dark forces.
I believed in his vision at the time and hence stayed on.
Letting go in order to let in
The process was different from any other. There was no story or script for guidance but the stage, the rituals, and rigors of the body. Each rehearsal was an exploration into the subconscious, or perhaps the unconscious, or maybe even the universal consciousness. Thinking had to cease, and so did the awareness of the body. The characters and ideas like the play of prakriti and purusha, the space between an end and beginning, and many others were born on stage through these rehearsals. As an actor one had to let go of all learning and thinking.
The connection
Strange enough, later, seated behind the screen preparing for the play, my mind would line up the characters. Like they were real and ready to play. It was not just the characters, but the screen, the cloth supporting my movements, the Mallakhamba from where I had to hang, the petals that would flow down my dress, the other bodies playing with me and supporting me, and the stage itself would come alive. I touched everything I could touch before I started, before every show, before every rehearsal. I felt a connection to the extent of me being an extension of everything. If I did not, I would keep touching long enough. The cloth covering the expanse of the stage, I wanted to sense it till its edge. Nothing was separate by the time the first sound of the play struck. And I knew it was not me. I could not have done it alone. It was a total surrender with a heart full of love for a play full of destruction.
The Invisible Masters of the Stage
I tried to reason many times about body’s intelligence when the mind’s stops. This play definitely asked for it. Was that all that happened? I do not think so. Though it was an hour-long physical play, I could never see it technically which should have come easily to me as a dancer. I could never once visualise it or practice it mentally (or even physically just by myself). I believe there was a play of various energies including the cloth, the actors, the stage and the characters that we believed in – dancing together as one. The Invisible Masters of the Stage conducting a symphony. It gave the possibility of limitlessness… All that was required was belief in a vision and then surrender. I remember someone saying to me after watching a show, “I don’t know if you do Karuppu or if Karuppu does you”. I knew the answer.
Dance of Trance
Karuppu, literally meaning darkness, was formed into the idea of destruction and creation, the imbalance and balance of the feminine and masculine, the separation and union of prakriti and purusha. The still but fully potential state of calm in between, where nothing exists yet contains the potential of everything. The cycle. To represent the ascending order of destruction themes of Iphigenia’s sacrifice, suicide by Ophelia, murder by Clytemnestra, Medea’s slaughter of her children and the ultimate unpacifiable destruction by Kali were born on stage. Five powerful yet completely different characters. A physical theatre production that explored the intensity of various emotions in movement and in stillness. Ritualistic and rhythmic movements that took a formless form. A dance of trance.
Since we were tapping into the subconscious, unknowingly, by following the different intensities of movement and giving into the body’s intelligence and not the mind’s, there was an inherent connection developed with the characters that we embodied and with every other object, person, or the space itself. Nothing was an ornament, neither the objects, nor the sounds or movement, nor the people. Everything and everyone had to be a character and all the characters along with the space became one in that journey. Sometimes even the audience. It was spiritual.