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8/6/2019 Ramanujam Constant
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ramanujam-constant 1/1
THE BE S T A R T S TAY S ON — I N O U R M E M O R I E S A N D L I V E S . T H R O U G H T H I S C O L U M N , W E G E T O U R A R T I S T S , W R I T E R S A N D F I L M - M A K E R S T A L K I N G A B O U T T H E C L A S S I C I N T H E I R H E A D S .
the classicin my head
Artist Jehangir Jani is fascinated by
how Sudhir Patwardhan and
Arpita Singh hold multiple
conversations on a single canvas
arts etc.8 A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 3
There are many artists thatcome to mind, but Sudhir
Patwardhan and ArpitaSingh are perhaps my favourites.
Patwardhan’sStreet Play is asignificant painting. I like how
the compostion reveals severallayers simultaneously. Thepainting leaves you wondering
whether it is a street play or a riotscene. The single figure watch-
ing the scene from behind a pil-lar could be a spectator in either.
I have largely dealt with singlefigures and non-specific loca-
tions, which is all the more rea-son that I admire Patwardhan asan artist. I find that we are both
triggered by politically moti-vated events.
Arpita Singh, on the otherhand, seems to have a very naive
approach to serious matters.Her portrayal of the ageing fe-
male body is not necessarily very pleasant. There are subtle
suggestions of violence. Of course, her composition draws
from the traditional approach of placing multiple elements onthe periphery of the main sub-
ject, and I like that. You can havesimultaneous conversations in
one painting.Most of my work also oper-
ates on two levels. At first glance,it looks very accessible. It is only
on closer inspection that youcome across uncomfortable lay-
ers. People have said that they enter my work feeling good, but
when the layers unfold, itunsettles them.
My appreciation of their work
is from the conclusions I havedrawn from what I perceive.
Somewhere, I have imbibed thismethodology of multiple con-
cepts, and this is probably why Ihave an affinity for their work. x
—As told to Deepika Nath
W hen British theatre director
Simon McBurney wasdown with a creative block
in 1998, his Booker-winnerfriend Michael Ondaatje
recommended a curious remedy: GH
Hardy’s essay A Mathematician’s Apology .McBurney never enjoyed maths in school,
but the book engrossed him. Amid theelegant equations, what floated out toMcBurney was the perennially fascinating
bit about Hardy’s relationship with thegenius from Madras, Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Ondaatje’s cure worked. It became thestarting point of McBurney’s play A
Disappearing Number .
Complicite, the experimental theatrecompany founded by McBurney along
with Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni in1983, is bringing the play to India, to coincide
with the International Congress of Mathemati-cians that begins in Hyderabad on August 19.
McBurney, who has directed A Disappear-ing Number , says he lived with the idea fornearly a decade before it premiered in Lon-
don in 2007. When his close friend and actorKatrin Cartlidge died, he revisited the final
chapter of the Hardy-Ramanujan collabora-tion and the death of Ramanujan in 1920, atthe age of 3 2. When Complicite first toured
India to stage Shakespeare’s Measure for Mea-sure in 2005, McBurney “travelled to Madras
to meet people who knew Ramanujan’s widow and find out more about his life”.
In the play, he frames the Hardy-Ramanu-
jan story in a contemporary narrative of a
maths lecturer who travels to India to traceRamanujan’s life. It also uses Ramanujan andHardy’s breakthroughs in the field o f partition
numbers as a device to talk about other kindsof partitions —cultural and political.
Before McBurney takes the play to Hyder-abad, he will stage it in Mumbai for three days
from August 9. Sanjna Kapoor, director of Prithvi Theatre, says it has been her dream tobring A Disappearing Number to India, but
she was initially daunted by the huge cost
that a play of such a large scale would involve.
“I was moved to tears when I saw it at the Bar-bican Centre in London in 2007. Still, I was
not sure about hosting it in India,” she says.But recently, professor MS Raghunathan of
the Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchinformed her about the International Con-gress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, an
ideal backdrop for a Ramanujan play. “We just couldn’t miss this chance,” says Kapoor.
She first watched a Complicite play 12
years ago on the recommendation of her
aunt, the British actor Felicity Kendal. Inter-actions with Complicite continued over the
years, mostly through faxed messages. When the company first came to Mumbai with Measure for Measure , they performed
at the 1,100-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theatreand theatregoers were blown away. Then
McBurney, to Kapoor’s delight, unexpect-edly added Prithvi Theatre to the schedule.
The intimate space of Prithvi was unable to
accommodate the original production, buthe staged a stripped-down version of theplay. “Still the impact remained the same —
all shows ran houseful. That’s the genius of McBurney,” says Kapoor.
Complicite is quite like the boho McBurney.Though considered to be one of the world’s toptheatre groups and one which changed the vo-
cabulary of contemporary British theate, itcalls itself an evolving ensemble of performers
and still doesn’t have a building of its own.“The advantage is that we can pop up
anywhere and follow our agenda,” saysMcBurney. He trained under the French actorJacques Lecoq, famous for his methods in
physical theatre, and has never denied his
teacher’s influence. Complicite addstechnology to narrative text, music to move-ments to create a strong visual and auralimpact. Its repertoire of over 40 productions
include adaptations of Samuel Beckett andShakespeare and Haruki Murakami’s short
stories The Elephant Vanishes . A Disappearing Number has several actors
from the Indian diaspora, including FirdausBamji, Paul Bhattacharjee, Hiren Chate,Divya Kasturi, Chetna Pandya and Shane
Shambhu, and the music is composed by Nitin Sawhney. “We wanted to show
Ramanujan’s feeling of exile in Cambridgethrough a cast that can express the reality of migration,” says McBurney.
The play was shown at the Lincoln CenterFestival in New York early this year. After the
India tour, the company will return toLondon’s West End.x
The Hardy-Ramanujan story comes to India as a play.Maverick British director Simon McBurney’s A Disappearing Number is the added attraction to the
International Congress of Mathematicians ■ A LAKA S AHANI
Points of view
Scenes from the play; (above right) director Simon McBurney
The Ramanujan
CONSTANT