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DECEMBER 1, 2001
NEELAM MAN SINGH CHOWDHRY
“An Unposted Love Letter”

The first performance of The Other Festival was Doris Lessing’s “AN UNPOSTED LOVE LETTER” directed by Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry, Artistic Director of The Company and a graduate from The National School of Drama. Her work has been presented at major festivals around the world, including LIFT, Festival d’ Avignon and Festival of Perth. She teaches drama at the Punjab University and also contributes articles on theatre. Established in 1983 in Chandigarh, Punjab, The Company has earned renown for creating a theatre that fuses source material from Western classics with a performance style grounded in an earthy Punjabi aesthetic. It is also renowned for counting among its performers a group of traditional Naqqals (female impersonators) who have had a long tradition as performers.

“An Unposted Love Letter” is a bilingual monologue in Punjabi and English adapted from one of Doris Lessing’s collection of short stories. The story is set in the green room of a theatre, where an actress reminiscences about her life and in this process comments on how a conventional society perceives an artist. The stage crammed with racks of exotic costumes and dominated centrally by a four-poster bed draped in white lace curtains, large baskets spilling over with props, aluminum trunks and some quaint kitchen paraphernalia is the scene of activity.

Ramanjit Kaur delivers her monologue, others practice their music and the Naqqals transform themselves into female impersonations. The story has no beginning, middle or end and is strung together in a complex tapestry of ideas, attitudes and value.

Cast & Credits:
Directed by: Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry; Translation: Surjit Patar; Music Design: B V Karanth Cast: Amrita: Ramanjit Kaur, Actors/Musicians/Singers: Pamela Singh, Mehar Chand, Amarjeet, Desraj, Bahadur Chand, Mundri Lal.. Backstage: Desraj, Amarjeet, Sanjeev Kumar. Lights: Ravinder ‘Happy’, Set Design: Sumant Jayakrishnan, Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry

When did you first come across this story? When did you decide to adapt it?
I was looking for a piece, which was very literate, which was much quieter, because most of my productions have been on a different kind of theme. I came across this short story by Doris Lessing and there was something in the story, which matched something of my own process at that point of time. It was actually more a piece which was a part of the theme of an actor to get more internal because it’s not a letter in the conventional sense, it’s not a story that has a beginning or an end, its like a string of anecdotes strung together more in terms of an internal life scheme of feelings, attitudes and concepts, rather complex piece and in fact this is my first show before an audience.

I have had private shows in Chandigarh but not for the public. I did this play last year at quite the same time in the middle of November and we have not had this show for a year because it just did not happen. While reading through the story, I felt the best place to locate an actress will be the green room. So I made the sets like a green room and the activities are what happen in a green room - ironing clothes, making tea, a certain kind of camera device, a bit of seriousness and that is where I situated the protagonist.

Writing in one language is difficult enough, you use 2 languages here. As a writer, do you adapt the script so the lay people find it easy to understand or you just go ahead and write it as you would?
What happens is, normally when we do a production we try to locate it such that somewhere there is vigilance beyond linguistic piety. In fact, I used a juxtaposition of both languages, more in terms of the way we speak normally. We speak in Punjabi and slip into English; English is a language, which is our legacy. The other thing, which is more technical, was how do you translate a word like androgynous? Whether in Tamil or Punjabi it would mean “Hijra’ or ‘ardhanareeswara’; both would not really connect with the whole sense of what it means to be androgynous. Even words like “I’m an actor so I am seen to be affected”, these are words, which are so much outside the vernacular vocabulary even in translation. So I thought why not use just English?

What linguistic tricks have you used to make even non-Punjabi speakers understand the dialogues?
When you start building up a production I think the motives come a little later. The whole process of work is so quiet, so private, so personal, so much in a special scheme that the motive enters much later. This is the first time perhaps that I am showing this play to a non-Punjabi speaking audience and it has certainly connected. For me, it’s a very good feeling. It’s not consciousness of the theme, a trick or a ploy, it’s just something that happened organically while working on this particular production because it has no situation, no theme.

What about the music? When did that come in? And why this kind of music?
The music was also very much a workshop production, so we just superimposed the music. Like for example, when she puts on the mime make up, it just happened spontaneously and the music also was spontaneous and it just flowed from the situation itself.

Music is very integral in the structure of the play. So it can’t just be a flow.

It starts off by being that and after that you definitely construct it, you improvise. Improvisation means some kind of blueprint and then you fill it out with fresh input.

The last piece of music in Hindustani was a morning raga? Is there any particular reason why you chose it or was it just for the feel of it?
It just seemed to be the right kind of selection for the moments created on stage.

Why do you have Naqqals in the play? Is it part of the Punjabi theatre or…?
Our company started in 1984 and we were a much larger company then. When I moved to Punjab after having lived outside my state for many years, I had to hear all the time that Punjabi is a crude language, it’s not as developed as some of the other languages, how the Punjabis are always jokers and funsters, never the hero, never the lover and Punjab has only its bangra, but no high classical art in the Punjab.

Somewhere this made me feel a little vexed. Even through I grew up very much outside my own state, I thought to myself, where has this image distortion taken place about language and myths, attitude and forms. This is the state that has produced the Guru Granth Sahib, some great Sufi poets. What happened? I won’t go into the whole history of language that Punjab went through, which is the politicization of language when Punjabi got associated with the Sikh religion and because the development of language and the development of folklore is so parallel when one has setbacks, the other also suffers. So when I moved to Punjab, with a deep sense of trying to go into my own journey, my own history, my own myths, for me language is not just a word, it is culture, history, it’s emotional, it’s hundreds of things for me.

So, I started trying to explore the forms that existed in Punjab and I came across a group of performers called the Naqqals. I found that they had an amazing repertoire of music, of movements, of musical skills. They do not come under what you call high art, classical art, it was more a basic populous kind of art. So I did workshops with them and through that, I did a production based on one of their folklore. Then I started picking up more contemporary plays and they just became part of my extended family of actors. So today I have in my company, a mixture of urban and rural actors, both in their separate disciplines and separate worlds and today I think that line of division has been totally dissolved. It’s like there never was.

You have taken the original story from Doris Lessing. What kind of a problem did you have when you tried to put that culture into another specific kind of culture and language?
I think this particular story to me, as a person was world’s theatre. All the ideas, all my own fears were manifested here by way of characters, the fears that exist within myself, the sense of being trapped in clichés. What acting means… like at one point she says ‘I am an actor therefore androgynous. I have nurtured the pain inside me, pain opposite to my woman’. All issues of gender. If I go back to my own experience of having been born and brought up in Amritsar, living in Chandigarh, which is quite a village kind of society, how I was perceived when I started doing theatre, how I was perceived by my in-laws, by my larger family…. The whole thing are issues that are very much part of the text. I had such a deep connection with a certain journey that I had begun with theatre. So for me, it became very personalized. I did not see a separate issue at all.

The whole play takes place in the green room of an actress. But the powerful presence of the bed… does it not depict a stereotype image of an actress? Why is it such an important prop?
For me, it did not seem like a stereotype. Even if it is a stereotype, it did not bother me. It’s really a question of a section of a scene. It does not strike a harsh note in my mind because there are so many costumes on stage. So this for me was a negative kind of space on stage, it’s white, it’s lacy, it’s for me a kind of counterpoint to other precedents of what is happening on stage. Also I think, it’s nice to have a bed in a green room, a place to rest, like when we rehearsed this morning. There was no place to lie down and the actors were taking turns to rest on it!!

Can you explain the significance of so many mirrors? Is it the way the others see you?
To me a mirror is like a dual image, the whole image of maya. You see what you want to see. It also shows you what you are. So it’s illusion and it’s reality and the whole ambiguity of shifting from the world of reality to the world of make believe. Of course, the mirror is an integral part of an actress’ life. So, I wanted it to be surrounded by mirrors, to create a multiple kind of reflection. I would have preferred more mirrors but it’s difficult to transport. I actually use four mirrors.

The stage setting is quite symmetrical with bed in the center, mirrors on the sides… was that intentional?
I guess it must be intentional. And why? Because I like balance!!

e-mail: neelammansingh@yahoo.com
The Other Festival Q & A: Audience Artist Interface