A Winter Evening's Nightmare

For quite sometime I had a yearning to watch a professional play on stage. I have a liking for plays watching then right since school days and even in college didn't miss many inspite of lack of company or schedule. With the same spirit and hope I was looking forward to a professional version which would be executed technically and aesthetically better, no doubt. So I got this opportunity to watch a play on Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's dream' directed by Tim Supple, a very critically acclaimed one. But as things turned out it was nothing like I expected.

The play on the whole was repulsive and outrightly ridiculous. The first turn off was the fact that for some weird reason the director or some fool decided to have the play in multiple languages at once. It's novel I must grant that, I have never seen use of several languages throughout the duration of the play. But it makes no sense. The whole point of conveying the essence is lost if the audience is unable to comprehend the dialogues. The last time I checked a play was about expression which is the acting, depiction which is direction and importantly about dialogues. Apparently some one forgot that. On top of that the director claims to have toured quite a lot of India and the idea behind this approach is to glean or absorb several aspects of the multicultural diversity and vividness India possesses. What could be dumber? A friend of mine made a point that since expression knows no boundaries it is not required that it be presented in a language the audience understands. Comparing it to a very different art form called mime where there is no concept of language. In my opinion, Mime is an art form where the actor has given up one mode of communication in order to prove his/her skill in communicating with expression and movement. But in a play we dont have that! The actors aren't doing that and they enjoy the luxury of speech. So its little excuse to squander it on a funny idea that seems to be pushing intellectuality on others. If in theory, language should not be a boundary why do we not have plays in baby-talk or some arbitrary verbiage. Not only would the actors save time in memorizing verses but also a lot of effort spared for the audience trying to make sense of what is being said.

Another disturbing aspect was the use of verse. In these times when people have little reason to understand or be patient enough to listen to long convoluted speeches it is awfully foolish to have long boring speeches or what appeared to me as poems being recited one after the other. While the style of speech is 'considered' no doubt beautiful and aesthetic, there are many many instances I have seen in movies or in real life of how well writers frame dialogues being witty, appealing and also literally beautiful. Plays should be representative of the present era. It's not that the logic doesn't apply anywhere. For instance, the play itself boasts of having incorporating modern day influences in style etc. So why is this approach selective in the most trivial aspect where it should have been?

The whole event brings to mind the reasons for the decadence and growing irrelevance of art forms in our lives. Art definitely has started lacking mass appeal and also suffers a disconnect from the masses. So while at inception such events and forms were directed towards widespread promulgation of ideas and concepts modern day art forms have regressed moving towards darker and abstract ideas which are hard to grasp and appreciate. Most of popular contemporary art is at mercy of a few critics who would judge its worth and then brand it. It has become an easy way of cooking up strange ideas, wild imagination running amok with little need to justify or make sense. Art's definition itself has come to award them this misused freedom where we as receptors have little to ask and expect for. When everything is justified as an interpretation and ingenuity what is the difference between a skilled artist and a lunatic. Given a set of tools with some luck both may end producing the same result in any art form, for different reasons of course, or is it the same reason? Inspite of this as I write this there is an auction on somewhere where a twisted sculpture is being sold for an average person's lifetime savings a hundered times fold.

It's sad to see that plays have become the way they are now. I would still love to watch those school and college plays - cocky, cliched and always entertaining for sure. I still long to see such plays and hope that there is some director or actor out there who cares for some sense. Till then I'll stick to movies. No more nightmares for me.