Mariyamma, the first original Malayalam play written in 1878.
Sreenath Nair
When Sreenath Nair decided to give life to the play Mariyamma, he knew well what he was taking up. From the day he started working on the first ever play written in Malayalam, the history of theatre changed, as we knew it. Mariyamma, written by Polachirackkal Kocheeppan Tharakan in 1878, has received official selection to the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFOK) 2016 which will commence on January 10. Mariyamma is one of the highlights of the festival this year and will be staged on January 11.
UK-based playwright Sreenath Nair, who is also a senior lecturer at School of Fine Arts and Performance Arts, University of Lincoln, has re-written history of theatre with his decision to adapt and direct this 138-year-old play. When asked what triggered the idea to take up Mariyamma, Sreenath says, “The play has immense historical importance. This is the first original play in Malayalam. When it was written, back then, there was no modern literature in Malayalam, even Chandu Menon’s Indulekha was written 11 years after it. Everything until then was either in Sanskrit or Tamil.”
He goes on to add, “In the history of theatre, this play was highly neglected. When G. Sankara Pillai speaks about the origin of Malayalam theatre, he mentions about a travelling theatre group from Tamil Nadu that visited Kerala in 1892, which triggered development of theatre in Kerala. He also mentions about Mariyamma, but he only considers the year when it was published? 1903. Mariyamma was staged before that at many places across Kerala, but somehow he does not treat it as the first play and speaks about Shakunthalam, which is a translated work, as the first. My question is, how can a translated work be considered as an original. It was a lie all along.”
He points out that Mariyamma did not have a complete production for years. “Not only was it not accepted historically, it did not have a proper production for so many years. It was both the history and its aesthetics that attracted me. I wanted to explore what Kocheepan was trying to say. Where did this idea to write a realistic play come from when written history points at N Krishna Pillai’s Broken House written only in 1940 inspired from Ibsenian realism? How did he come up with the structure of the play? The more I thought about it the more I was fascinated.”
Speaking more about Mariyamma, Sreenath says, “The play deals with the very intense subject of domestic violence, in a very realistic way. An educated young girl Mariyamma is married off to a Syrian-Catholic household in Kottayam, where she is left to face abuse from her mother-in-law. The highlight here is that even the first play written in Malayalam was woman-centric and spoke about the male-dominated society. But the play is not a tragedy, it has a happy ending.”
When asked about how experimental he was with Mariyamma, he says, “In 19th century, there were very few objects or properties inside a house. In my directorial work, I am very careful about using props. I am in an effort to recreate the simplicity of life on stage. I consider theatre as a special space, where one can see human issues and emotions closely. Today we are living in a world of technology, a collage of visuals. But in my theatre there is no space for big technology. The audience can see human bodies, their sweat and breath very closely.”
Sreenath considers Mariyamma as the ‘Kerala model’ of theatre. “Our way of expressing is very different from a Western body. Melodrama is a natural expression of Malayalis, but the idea to call it ‘melodrama’ is western. Mariyamma tells us the way in which we used to speak and dress up 100 years ago. For me it was my own journey through the first play written in Malayalam; it was discovering myself.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
Next Story
