8 AUGUST 2010

arts etc. 3

The Ramanujan

CONSTANT

The Hardy-Ramanujan story comes to India as a play. Maverick British director Simon McBurneys A Disappearing Number is the added attraction to the International Congress of Mathematicians

hen British theatre director Simon McBurney was down with a creative block in 1998, his Booker-winner friend Michael Ondaatje recommended a curious remedy: GH Hardys essay A Mathematicians Apology. McBurney never enjoyed maths in school, but the book engrossed him. Amid the elegant equations, what floated out to McBurney was the perennially fascinating bit about Hardys relationship with the genius from Madras, Srinivasa Ramanujan. Ondaatjes cure worked. It became the starting point of McBurneys play A Disappearing Number. Complicite, the experimental theatre company founded by McBurney along with Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni in 1983, is bringing the play to India, to coincide with the International Congress of Mathematicians that begins in Hyderabad on August 19. McBurney, who has directed A Disappearing Number, says he lived with the idea for nearly a decade before it premiered in London in 2007. When his close friend and actor Katrin Cartlidge died, he revisited the final chapter of the Hardy-Ramanujan collaboration and the death of Ramanujan in 1920, at the age of 32. When Complicite first toured India to stage Shakespeares Measure for Measure in 2005, McBurney travelled to Madras to meet people who knew Ramanujans widow and find out more about his life. In the play, he frames the Hardy-Ramanujan story in a contemporary narrative of a

ALAKA SAHANI
accommodate the original production, but he staged a stripped-down version of the play. Still the impact remained the same all shows ran houseful. Thats the genius of McBurney, says Kapoor. Complicite is quite like the boho McBurney. Though considered to be one of the worlds top theatre groups and one which changed the vocabulary of contemporary British theate, it calls itself an evolving ensemble of performers and still doesnt have a building of its own. The advantage is that we can pop up anywhere and follow our agenda, says McBurney. He trained under the French actor Jacques Lecoq, famous for his methods in physical theatre, and has never denied his teachers influence. Complicite adds technology to narrative text, music to movements to create a strong visual and aural impact. Its repertoire of over 40 productions include adaptations of Samuel Beckett and Shakespeare and Haruki Murakamis short stories The Elephant Vanishes. A Disappearing Number has several actors from the Indian diaspora, including Firdaus Bamji, Paul Bhattacharjee, Hiren Chate, Divya Kasturi, Chetna Pandya and Shane Shambhu, and the music is composed by Nitin Sawhney. We wanted to show Ramanujans feeling of exile in Cambridge through a cast that can express the reality of migration, says McBurney. The play was shown at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York early this year. After the India tour, the company will return to Londons West End. x

Scenes from the play; (above right) director Simon McBurney

maths lecturer who travels to India to trace Ramanujans life. It also uses Ramanujan and Hardys breakthroughs in the field of partition numbers as a device to talk about other kinds of partitions cultural and political. Before McBurney takes the play to Hyderabad, he will stage it in Mumbai for three days from August 9. Sanjna Kapoor, director of Prithvi Theatre, says it has been her dream to bring 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 Barbican 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 Research informed her about the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, an ideal backdrop for a Ramanujan play. We just couldnt 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. Interactions 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 Theatre and theatregoers were blown away. Then McBurney, to Kapoors delight, unexpectedly added Prithvi Theatre to the schedule. The intimate space of Prithvi was unable to

T H E B E S T A R T S T A Y S O N 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 TA 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 classic
in my head

Points of view
here are many artists that come to mind, but Sudhir Patwardhan and Arpita Singh are perhaps my favourites. Patwardhans Street Play is a significant painting. I like how the compostion reveals several layers simultaneously. The painting leaves you wondering whether it is a street play or a riot scene. The single figure watch-

Artist Jehangir Jani is fascinated by how Sudhir Patwardhan and Arpita Singh hold multiple conversations on a single canvas

ing the scene from behind a pillar could be a spectator in either. I have largely dealt with single figures and non-specific locations, which is all the more reason that I admire Patwardhan as an artist. I find that we are both triggered by politically motivated events. Arpita Singh, on the other hand, seems to have a very naive

approach to serious matters. Her portrayal of the ageing female 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 on the periphery of the main subject, and I like that. You can have simultaneous conversations in one painting. Most of my work also operates on two levels. At first glance, it looks very accessible. It is only

on closer inspection that you come across uncomfortable layers. People have said that they enter my work feeling good, but when the layers unfold, it unsettles them. My appreciation of their work is from the conclusions I have drawn from what I perceive. Somewhere, I have imbibed this methodology of multiple concepts, and this is probably why I have an affinity for their work. x As told to Deepika Nath