Names are often misleading — more so when it comes to contemporary Indian theatre. Evam Indrajit has nothing to do with the Ramayana or Uddhwastha Dharmshala with religious rituals. This reviewer was clearly misled by the name, Manu Manas, thinking that ‘this must be more RSS propaganda in the guise of modern theatre!’ The play, on the contrary, turned out to be a mind-boggling exercise about the mind of an actor named Manu.
Written and directed by Manoj Nair, this Shadow Theatre Group (Bhopal) production was showcased at Hriday Manch aka the National Hindi Natya Mahotsav 2023, which the Delhi-based Sparsh Natya Rang presented in collaboration with the Calcutta-based group, Santoshpur Anuchintan. Manu Manas was staged on the second afternoon at the Academy of Fine Arts (picture).
Nair’s play made a sedate start inside the rehearsal room of an urban theatre group with a crucial show coming up in a few days and a key actor needing to be replaced by a newcomer. When Manu (played with genuine sensibility by Alay Khan) — the playwright-director — welcomes a rather unassuming youngster, little does he realise that he is actually confronting his alter ego, Manas (a spontaneous Abhi Shrivastava). As the rehearsal starts, two of them lead us into the labyrinth of an actor’s mind à la Konstantin Stanislavski. How existential predicament infringes on the psyche of an actor-director in contemporary India is the premise on which Nair works out a multi-layered play that gets more and more complicated as it proceeds.
The presence of Manu’s girlfriend (Antima Soni in a life-like portrayal), who doubles as the group’s stage manager, facilitates the gradual peeling back of the actor’s narcissistic self. In the process, we also get an insider’s view of the acting methods prevalent on the Indian stage — from method acting to Brecht and Boal and the recent methodists. How the actors grapple with the available methods while developing a character forms an intriguing subtext. Nair’s relaxed treatment of the theme makes Manu Manas a compelling watch.
The festival also featured Sparsh’s hilarious work, Pati Gaye Ree Kathiawaar, and Anuchintan’s passionate new work, Ghar.