As relevant as it gets

You can call it destiny’s droll sense of humour but it is quite amusing to learn that director Satyabrata Rout, who won the Best Director Award at the META Awards, 2013 for the Kannada play, Matte Eklavya, is still quite unfamiliar with the language. But when the script is relevant, talent natural and emotions real, words are immaterial.

The story of the play centres on the story from Mahabharata where Eklavya is ordered by Drona to cut his right thumb as guru dakshina. Underlining the universality of the play, Rout says, “I believe the story is relevant even today. As a teacher myself, I know what goes on in the Indian education system. Students, till date, are discriminated based on their caste.  So, while the play’s critics state that the character of the adivasi boy has not been etched very well, I’ll say that the play is a comment on every student and his right to education no matter who he is and where he comes from.”

Working with a team with whom he shares no similarities, except for the love of theatre must surely had its set of challenges? Rout agrees to it, wholeheartedly. “The most challenging thing about directing the play was the fact that I didn’t know Kannada.” “I was in Kolar Gold Mines in search of a team I could work with and that’s when my friend, activist Kotiganahalli Ramaiah, suggested I work with his theatre repertory, Aadima. These people didn’t know Hindi or English and initially, I required an interpreter to even be able to communicate with them.

But after a while, instead of  trying to understand the language, I decided to merely read the sound of the words and the emotions because emotions are universal. This seemed to work because I slowly found that students, who are not professional actors, began to understand the concept of the play.” Rout then jests, “Interestingly, I still don’t know what they say (on stage or off) till today!”

Language concerns aside, commenting on the best thing about the team, Rout enthuses, “The total team of Aadima are down-to-earth people who have this unbridled, raw energy evocative of  tribal people and I think that’s what worked for the play. As a director I really didn’t have to anything more than channelise this wild energy in to the play.

Talking about how the play landed up getting short listed before eventually winning the Best Director and Best Actor awards at META, Rout springs a surprise when he says, “I didn’t know that a CD of Matte Eklavya was sent.” “When I enquired the team told me that they sent it from Kolar,” says Rout adding, “This year, META received 350 entries out of which they short listed 10 plays. I was even more astonished when we got selected as one of the 10,” evinces Rout.

So, was it a big deal to stage the play in front of an august audience in New Delhi? “It’s not a new thing for me,” he states matter-of-factly, “I’ve been working in theatre for the last 30 years and I’ve worked with BV Karanth for more than 20 years, till his death in 2002.

That experience gives me the impetus to do good theatre. That said, it was a completely new experience for the cast. This was the first time they were visiting New Delhi. So before they presented the play to the jury and the audience, I told them to do it with utmost belief And you know what, when I spoke to the jury committee and other members of the audience members all of them told me that “it’s the play’s truth and simplicity that works for it.”

While on the topic of winning the Best Director award, Rout is quite nonchalant. “Honestly speaking, I am quite casual about the fact that I won the award. Getting an award or not is not what drives as a professor of theatre. The biggest award for me is when I know that a student of mine is doing good work wherever he/she is.”