A DOCTOR's PLAY.... Kala Ghoda

A DOCTOR’S PLAY

 

            Theater is magic. Sheer magic for its learner wherein, you don’t go to watch a narrative story in proscenium’s perspective. You go and forget about the proscenium, in fact. The space can easily convert itself into universe with the magic of performers, technical team and your imaginative mind. At the end of the day, impact is what lingers in the mind. Every theatre teaches, let it be commercial one or be it academic one. So was the experience of watching, ‘KALA GHODA’ a fresh play written & directed by Dr. Anil Bandiwdekar was performed flawlessly at Sahitya Sangh. Flawless performance, is its accurate description in one line. This is how even a non-commercial, pure academic theatre is performed all over Maharashtra. That is passion.

           With theatre, one always ask fundamental questions to any discrepancy in the system/ life/ culture. More fundamentally the question is asked, deeper goes the theatre. One such fundamental question is, ‘If a psychiatrist can have psychological problems?’ And the answer is plain yes. He is a human being first before he is a psychiatrist. The next fundamental question is, if a psychiatrist relates himself with the patient at times and the Freudian answer to this is also a yes. In the due course, if it’s possible for a doctor to cure himself as he knew the symptoms and is a learned therapist? The answer is, not necessarily and not always. Of course, one may experiment with self but within limits. One can’t control one’s sub-conscious is another fundamental. So, to cure a patient, a psychiatrist tries to relate himself with the patient to ensure effective cure. To sum up the play, a further question asked is, ‘If the society accepts a patient who is recovered from a disorder?’ Ours is a complex society with religious, social, moral and gender based inhabitations. A human mind in such society always remains under pressure of these forces to suppress its free will. There lies the conflict.

             Lalji, a youth, working in a horse stable, one day blinded the horses and thus is admitted to Dr. Rakesh for treatment. To diagnose the root cause of his action, Dr. Rakesh tries to explore his past, the orthodox gujarati family background, religious faith induced by mother, his relation with father, his parental relationship, his intrapersonal relationship with people around, relation with opposite sex and so on. He also uses hypnosis, auto suggestion, mental exercises to connect the broken links of Lalji’s behavioral pattern.  A psychiatric diagnosis is the outcome of all these and their interrelation with the behavioral patterns of patient. While diagnosing this, Lalji charges Doctor with same allegation that he faces and asks back the same questions to him. Doctor then realizes that his thought process has certain links with the mental condition of his patient and seldom gets upset by the fact that he is being mirrored by Lalji. Lalji loves horses and has been seeing a black horse is his fantasy since his childhood. Lalji’s girlfriend, Lalita makes him meet Mustafa, a local horse breeder. That’s how a boy of a steel trader ends up working in the horse stable. Once with his passion, the horses; Lalji soon forgets about his inhabitations and let himself be free to his passion of caring & riding horses. One night, his girlfriend aggressively forces him to make love with her and…. That’s how we get the answer. The play questions about the overall sexual suppressions in the society, not only of youth but of married people too, that are under continuous stress or otherwise under pressure of their weird religious inhabitations.

 

            Setting appropriate premise for the play and using it effectively is a point of debate many a times. Here the writer-director Dr. Anil Bandiwadekar himself has designed the set to use, percentage maxima. This is how academic theatre crosses the boundary of all perceptual limits. As the curtain opens, what we see on stage is a mind! Yes, it’s a mind! With all its neuro-scientific divisions, we see a complete mind on stage. Mind is infinite so is space, thus it’s all black as if the grey matter representing the dark matter of space. The mind is divided in to conscious and sub-conscious mind with a simple level and four square block as its basic division of memory compartments. Left and right openings to the relative brainer thoughts and Occipital lobe in the back that derives all visuals and frontal lobe for conceptualization and thinking, representing complete brain. Hats off to set design for such in-depth representation with a simple level and few blocks. The incidents with other characters are set in the conscious mind and the beauty is, all the characters goes to back of the mind, when not in the thought conscious! Beautiful. As said earlier, entrance of thoughts in mind were articulately and precisely placed. For creative thoughts, the characters enter from the right side and for practical, academic discussions from the left side of mind. All visual entrances are from back occipital lobe and all narrative thinking and conceptualization is delivered by Dr. Rakesh from the frontal lobe! Such is the beauty of the setup. Continuous complex movements, linking and delinking the scenes and maintaining the flow and treatment of play was just perfect. Audience of above five hundred was totally involved in the play till end. Credit of course goes to Doctor.
 

            To illuminate this dark, diseased mind was a challenge too. In the absence of any light reflective stage property in the setup; characters and thoughts were the only area of illumination. Veteran Light designer, Sheetal Talpade has produced a beauty within these limitations. To design lights for such play was a challenge. Area lights were a must for each scene in almost all nine divisions of stage. It is done just perfectly. Scenes in all the nine places were illuminated with key, fill & rim with appropriate tones, with a continuous process of flowing thoughts proceedings on stage, it was, ‘on your toes’ job, nicely executed. Flawless & beautiful!    

            The team and the act was led by Ashish Bhide as Dr. Rakesh. Most difficult and tedious role I have seen in recent past on academic theatre. A narrator, an analyst, counselor with his conscious behavior and sub conscious detours at times were executed with ease and composure. There was no exit to this center pillar character for the entire play that endures above two hours. Tough job with difficult movements around the stage as per the linked and de-linked thought process of the play. Voice & projection is a great asset of this actor who, I have seen grooming day by day. Rakesh Joshi, as Lalji has shown his deliberation in the first part and with certain stubbornness and vulnerability in the second, during the root cause diagnosing treatment process, where he opened quite a lot. Manisha Chauhan is another actress to denote for a clean performance. Middle aged Nandita, a role against her actual stature and age was performed with ease and with proper gujarati dialect. This is one artist to watch for, sure.

 

Uday Nibandhe as father, Sanjay Joshi as Mustafa, Rutuja Chipde as Lalita and Samata Jadhav as Alka have done their parts effectively.
 

Ruchita Gurav, Manish Shegaonkar, Pradeep Peje, Aashish Punde and Datta Shinde supported well to the team.

 

Theatre is a perishable art. Academic theatre is even more perishable with its shelf life lasting just one show. Under such circumstances, a serious thought must be given to get such performance video recorded, so as all the theatre lovers could see it on tube and benefitted.    

 

- Aabhas Anand.

15.11.2016

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