Of bonding and bondage

Of bonding and bondage

thehindu.com | Mar 4th 2011

'Anubandhyam', based on the life and works of French playwright Jean Genet, raises questions about the established order in mainstream society.

The play ‘Anubandhyam' performed recently at School of Drama, Thrissur, delves into the political and psychological terrains of male homosexuality. Based on the life and works of French playwright Jean Genet, this play was directed by Shibu S. Kottaram, the Head of Department of the school.

Unexplored theme

The play demands our attention for not only its theme, which is largely unexplored in Malayalam theatre, but also for the fact that it challenges our concept of sexuality. The author himself was an outlaw, sent to Reformatory school at a young age, imprisoned all over Europe for theft as well as his homosexual adventures. His curious philosophy of inverting societal moral codes by placing evil and betrayal as virtues, describing the process of thieving as a quasi-religious act has made him a proponent of the Theatre of Cruelty that essentially looks to purge society of evil through violent acts on stage.

The performers mostly speak lines from Genet's ‘Deathwatch,' which centres on three prisoners locked up in the same cell. Two of them, petty thieves, revere Green-Eyes – the ‘master' criminal convicted for murder. They harbour a deep and secret desire for Green-Eyes and want to attain his ‘status.' As the actors use their bodies to create an intelligently choreographed visual, the play uses a biographical text detailing the author's life and philosophy to the accompaniment of drums as background score.

As the title indicates, the performance recreates the wretched conditions of cattle bound together on their way to the slaughter house. Jostling against each other in their struggle for space, the realisation of a common fate bonds them together.

The dialectics surrounding the guard and the prisoners in the play are further developed by borrowing from the theme of ‘The Balcony,' which is about role reversals. This device is interestingly appropriated in ‘Anubandhyam,' opening up the minds of the viewers to raise significant questions about the established order and its outcasts.

Allegory

Here the solitude and misery of imprisonment is rather an allegory of the feeling of confinement in mainstream society felt by people of different sexual orientation. The guard is the representative of the established order that keeps watch over these ‘deviant' people. His lines about friends and enemies and his role reversal as the prisoner points to the ambiguity of these ‘roles' while putting forth a critique of the moral high position assumed by mainstream society.

The background narration mentioning how a woman feels about her body under the male gaze juxtaposed with male homosexuals' visual enacted on stage foregrounds the commonality of experience of both these peoples as the ‘Other' in mainstream society.

The all-male cast of the play drawn from the first semester students of the Bachelor of Theatre Arts, has performed with energy. The rough and stark sceneography that consists of scaffolding with nets in an open space brings out the misery and hopelessness of confinement-a situation both the condemned and the guard share. The innovative music score that combines vocal narration with the beats of the drum adds strength to the play. The director deserves to be complimented for this well designed play that is charged with political insight.

Keywords: Anubandhyam, Malayalam theatre



Original Page: http://www.thehindu.com/arts/theatre/article1506446.ece

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