After staging The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a serious and sensitive play about a neurodivergent youngster, theatre director Atul Kumar will be staging an adaptation of the rip-roaring Greek play Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes in 411 BC. Produced by D for Drama, Atul Kumar's adaptation, called Ambaa, will be performed at the ongoing Prithvi Theatre Festival.
The original play has a hilarious, bawdy plot of a woman, Lysistrata, taking the initiative to bring an end to a festering war between Greek city states by calling for a sex strike. Gathering together women from the warring states, Lysistrata urges them to deny their men carnal pleasures until peace is negotiated. Not surprisingly, her canny ploy works. Aristophane's no-holds-barred comedy has been performed often down the ages not just on stage but on the screen as well because it never fails to bring the house down.
Atul Kumar came upon Lysistrata during his college days in Delhi, and was instantly drawn to its comic, farcical and satirical nature. But he didn't have the courage to stage it earlier because of its inherent sexual scenes. "I am now mature enough to handle its in-your-face boldness. It is also the right time for a satire of this kind because the whole world is ridden with conflict and war," he explained. Amazed by the sheer stupidity of countries attacking one another soon after coming out of a near-annihilating pandemic, Kumar added, "Looking, as it does, at the world of toxic masculinity through the female gaze, the play makes a lot of sense."
Unlike Aristophanes' play which was set in the Greece of his time, Kumar's adaptation will not specify the time or place where the action takes place because he wants it to have a universal connotation. "The characters in Ambaa speak a combination of Hindi and Bundeli, a lyrical dialect of western UP and Madhya Pradesh, but the play is not set in either of these states," he pointed out. "Apart from the fact that the story is set in India, I have deliberately smudged the specificity of time and place so that the subject could be about any war zone in any time."
In keeping with this approach, the sets and clothes of Ambaa will be of a neutral nature. "By way of set design, there will only be some tents on stage to indicate that it is a battlefield," said Kumar. "And the clothes, to begin with, will be white. Then, as the events unfold, they will acquire shades of seductive vermilion, wine red and other vibrant colours. But the scenes will be lit in a dramatic, magical manner."
Wrishabh, who translated the play from its English version to Hindi and Bundeli, describes Ambaa as timeless. "Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata in 411 BC, but its themes of patriarchy, power, violence and desire transcend all ages," he observed.
Bundeli theatre is much appreciated by the masses in UP and MP, but will an audience in Mumbai be able to understand the dialect? Kamna Pathak, playing the eponymous role of Ambaa, hails from an area where Bundeli is spoken. "I don't see any reason for the Mumbai audience to not understand Bundeli," she said. "It is very similar to Braj Bhasha, which most Hindi-speaking audiences are familiar with. The use of Bundeli enhances the comic tone of our play. And I am sure viewers will enjoy it."
Atul Kumar added, "Bundeli works very well because of its flow and robustness. Its earthiness makes the flavour of our adaptation closer to the original."
With its raunchy dialogues, one would have expected Ambaa to have elements of nautanki, a popular form of entertainment in Bundelkhand, but the director emphasises that this is not so. "We have music and dance but it is not particular to the region," he stated. "Ambaa has Hindustani classical music: Dhrupad, Thumri, Dadra etc. Sometimes we have an aalap or just a tanpura being played. We also have a background percussion score that is not necessarily Indian, created electronically. So this is our soundscape."
It will be interesting to see how the insanity of war is presented through a laugh riot, in which women make macho men lay down their arms by brazenly denying them that one thing they cannot do without.
Ambaa will be performed at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu, on November 13 and 14.