P. A. Chacko
Theatrical performance has its own purpose and message. It entertains. It reflects like a mirror to society. It makes people reflect about fellowship, avarice, greed, self glory, jealousy, filian neglect, conspiracy, life, death and hereafter.
But, today, theatre has been dumped into a corner. Anyone one who performs to reflect the doings of the ruler is pulverised like a fly with a hammer. Kunal Kamra, the brave standup comedian, is facing the ire of the arrogant power that has much to hide.
Today, in the world of media plague, YouTube and Whatsapp university, theatre is a private entertainment in parked cars, under trees, along the seashore, in bedrooms, while grazing cattle by rural kids, or in private spaces.
That apart, William Shakespeare the dramatist who wrote jocular but incisive dramas for the theatre, has left us this message in ‘As You Like It’:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
And, so said the Muse: We are all ‘merely players’, fools and baffoons, jokers and jonnies, cartoons and caricatures, on the stage of time. What a theatrical touch!