Get Thee Backstage, Playwright! Isabel de Santa Rita Vas isabelsr...@gmail.com
Story-teller, yes. Always. Playwright? Not in my wildest dreams. How on earth did I get to write for the stage? The truth is, I stumbled upon this playwriting stuff, having knocked about theatre as a teacher of young adults and a student of literature. The plays we began to stage were fascinating pieces by famous playwrights. Works by Miller, Chekhov, O'Neill, Dattani, were followed by adaptations from novels, films, poems. All these grounded us firmly on a love of great literature and offered us a taste of various genres, including some basic modes of viewing life, i.e. comedy and tragedy, and many offshoots, revolts and experimental forms. A day came when the life around and within our own little world demanded to be performed. And since no ready scripts were at hand all wrapped up in fame, literary or theatrical, our theatre group found itself at a crossroads: Either we keep staging stories situated in other places or times, or... Or what? That was when I began to scratch out my own plots, create characters, ponder over themes, and factor in the audience response. It was not too painful a task, actually, since the journeyman adapting for the stage now offered vital insights and a measure of confidence. Now, I had a new brief: to give voice to our own stories. And so I wrote A Leaf in the Wind, my first play. Since it was written to be performed by The Mustard Seed Art Company to which I belong, this very first play I scribbled did find life on stage; as did most of the 35 plays that I have written over the years. Writing for the stage has nudged me, implacably, to listen to life as it unfolds in my immediate universe, demanding of myself that I discern the significant from the trivial, and that I hone in on stories and images and themes and tunes and people that might offer a horizon for contemplation and questioning. A crowded marketplace! Sandals on the Doorstep grew out of a newspaper report on a pair of young boys in a Goan village who murdered their old grandmother to steal and sell her jewelry to bet on an IPL match. A frenetic road-rage seemed to fit into this weft and warp of mindless violence taking monstrous shape within our homes and streets. The story had to be told. A picture that imprints itself in the mind's eye, a fragment of a story vaguely remembered, a character that has taken form within the half-light of one's consciousness, all these can pursue the playwright until the page and the stage make room for them. Rarely is a play born full-blown in my mind. The germ of an idea is exciting but tiny. The gestation period is long, often frustrating, and absorbing of many hours of the day and night. That's when I scribble on pages that get lost, hunt for books, Google all manner of related matters, and glance at my companions in the bus or on the street and see them peopling my plays. There's reading and research to be immersed into, headfirst. My first encounter with a historical personage as my dramatis persona was within the play Fiddlesticks!, the dramatized life and times of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Knowing only that his music resonated deeply and brightly within my soul, all the rest had to be meticulously studied, the attempt made to discover a viewing angle, the plunge taken to select, create, modify, invent, shape, dramatize. Other characters from history have worked their way into my writing, people who had always intrigued me: Tagore (in Rabindrababu at the Post Office), Abbé Faria (in Kator Re Bhaji), Mahatma Gandhi (Spectacles of Peace), Mother Teresa (It's a Hot Day, Thank God), yes, everyday names that never grew pallid with familiarity; as also the many writers, artistes and other restless ghosts who people an ancient library (Ghosts at Large). Events of historical import often hold you in their grip for years, until they write themselves into your page, as in the case of the story of the Liberation of Goa in Playing with the Eye of the Dragon and the influential Opinion Poll in Goa in Voices After Me. These worlds reveal to the playwright new insights as the voices of the powerful, less powerful or powerful in diverse ways weave into a pregnant ballad. Small people from one's childhood surface, such as the nearly invisible bhangi (toilet cleaner) who used the silent service stairs to carry away 'night-soil', or the poskem (adopted daughter) bent over pots and pans while weaving tales of adventure, the wiry old man wearing a red kashtti (small loin cloth) and a tight pigtail on his otherwise shaven head who arrived down the river punting a canoe filled with coconuts; these historical characters announce their names and conflicts. The research often leads into oral history, archival records, into the recesses of personal memory. What do you write about, people ask. Social issues? Do I? I may set out to sketch the picture of a young woman from the fishing community, back from Shantiniketan, making sense of her life, her convoluted relationships, with a grandfather who has travelled the world as a 'shippie', and a brother who hates his sisters as much as he hates the sea (Who Sits Behind My Eyes?); or I may attempt to find voice for the anguish blowing around the forces of rapid commercialization of pristine rural landscapes (On the Holy Trail); themes are verbalized in the writing, in the reading and the performing. Often the tale refuses to be born for want of a befitting form. Writing a play is a demanding craft, to be carefully learnt. Periodically I'm afflicted with a fever to amass books and devour 'how-to' material: how does one construct a theatrically sound play? And books do turn up, books on theatre craft that none of my friends see, but that shout at me to come and get them. Building plots and subplots that hold the tension and lead to an organic resolution, creating characters who are arresting and complex, and getting to know them, their world-view and their quirks, it is all a long and layered process. To me, personally, the form the play is to take offers a major challenge; not only should it be in sync with the content, it should also stretch me as a writer. Is it to be a story within a story? Flashbacks? Multiple angles on one single life? A detective story? Science fiction? Tragedy, comedy, melodrama, physical theatre, mime? The Name of the Game used mime, movement and background narration to dramatize popular games and invite reflection on the joy of solidarity; No Bats in My Attic! spoke of houses and family relationships, all through letters; Art for the Heart's Sake is a short play for a single actor playing four diverse roles; Whistling in the Light is set in the future when the State regulates what amount and kind of light the citizen can see. A playwright must think through all this in images. "Congratulations on a wonderful play; you have tackled deeply serious issues, both social and personal, with a light touch and a captivating structure," writes someone. Someone else hops backstage with some regularity to pop the question: "Why don't you do a nice comedy?" What can I answer? That a world-view is as organic as the blood and heart and mind? That comedy is tremendous fun; but in excessive doses it might be too much of a good thing, at least in my book? That great satire is a form of humour I might aspire to, but have not mastered? That a rock-and-tumble bedroom-and-bathroom farce is something I am not rocking to learn? These retorts sound defensive. Worse, they sound disrespectful of an audience that wishes you well, and is dying to laugh. The playwright and the director do communicate with a breathing, energetic presence that is the live audience. Where does that leave me? Of course life can be funny, as it can be poignant, or absurd or tragic. How do I meander through these complex demands? Sadly, there are hardly any lead pencils at hand today to chew on in despair. The mouse at the computer doesn't fit the bill. I agonize. Get thee backstage, playwright! Playwriting has directed me to theatre as a way of life. Dramatic and colourful, even though perhaps, in small unequal measures; experimental, at least in my own quiet eyes; collaborative and inclusive; contemplative in action; these are threads out of which I try to weave the fabric of my seeing, dreaming, writing, living. -- Isabel de Santa Rita Vas is the woman who walks: walking with feet on the ground and head in the clouds is ... her. Several plays mentioned above are included in her book *Frescoes in the Womb: Six Plays from Goa* (Broadway; Goa,1556). Her email: isabelsr...@gmail.com