SUNIR PANDEY
Before Prayogshala (Nepali for laboratory) gets underway, the folks at
Mandala Theatre inform us: the ensuing drama is an experiment of six scenes from six different Henrik Ibsen plays. The outcome is a pastiche on patriarchy and the lengths women (are made to) go to preserve it, woven together by the always handy theme of enacting a play about making a play.
Aside from playing Elida of The Lady from the Sea, who is torn between her husband of 10 years and a reappeared lover of the past, actress Chanda has to deal with a moody director who casts her opposite a vapid colleague, a self-avowed veteran of the stage. Her character lacks freedom and is dependent upon men at crucial points of her life, but Chanda herself is fighting ‘suitors’ at the workplace a century later.
Srijana is willing to quit acting and become totally reliant on her fiancé even though she plays a housewife (Helen Alving of Ghosts) wrecked by her philanderer husband. Although she is totally devoted to her late husband, even opening an orphanage in his name, Helen knows she is compelled to keep mum to safeguard her reputation. Srijana, on the other hand, isn’t totally convinced of her impending marriage.
Scenarios like these lend themselves easily to adaptation, but some of the scenes in the play portray a post-industrialist Europe that doesn’t yet have a Nepali counterpart. For example, parts of The Master Builder are more a parody of nepotism than a battle of the sexes as intended in the original text. And Hedda Gabler is too forcefully done to address issues of rivalry and sexual intrigue (if any) in Nepali academia even though it alludes to the sort of chauvinism reflected in Nepali idioms like pothi baseko (belittling women’s efforts).
All this sets the stage, as director (of the meta play) Somnath Khanal changes actors and entire sections during the dress rehearsal of his dream play, A Doll’s House. We gather that Junu’s Nora is threatened by Krogstad who plans to blackmail her husband Torvald. And while Nora dismisses Dr Rank’s infatuation, Junu has to deal with the affection of Suresh, who plays Rank. And as Torvald’s selfishness drives Nora out of their house, Junu’s husband arrives with similar convictions to further blur the lines between rehearsals and real life.
The European settings and idealist dialogues of the mock-play take centre stage for most of Prayogshala, but it is the often seamless transition from a 100-year-old body of work to the unspoken norms of present Nepali society that saves the play from digressing into a stale khichdi.
Sunir Pandey
Prayogshala
Director: Rajan Khatiwada
Script writer: Samuna KC
Cast: Somnath Khanal, Suresh Sapkota, Junu Bista, Chanda Rai, Srijana Adhikari
Mandala Theatre, runs until 3 January (except Mondays), 4.30pm, Rs 200 (Rs 100 for students), 016924269