BackPlaying ‘Macbeth’
A devised solo show by Rupesh Tillu comes to Mumbai's National Centre for the Performing Arts
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Aficionados of the cult film Ship Of Theseus would perhaps remember a sparkling presence regaling a house party in Sweden, in the film’s third leg in which a stockbroker travels to Stockholm to hunt down the recipient of a stolen kidney. That walk-on part was inhabited by real-life entertainer Rupesh Tillu, who is currently touring India with his eccentric solo performance piece, Madbeth.
The play premiered in 2010 as a thesis project at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts, where Tillu has completed a course in physical comedy. A peculiarly mobile performance, it has been performed in the oddest of settings, from a community centre in the West Bank for marginalized Palestinians, to a facility in Maryland, US, for young women convicted of second-degree felonies, to Dehradun’s St Joseph’s Academy, where he performed for his largest turnout yet, of 1,500 people (his smallest audience numbered just five).
This year, Tillu aims to carve out a distinctive niche in Mumbai’s burgeoning urban theatre scene. Before its well-received shows at Prithvi Theatre last month, Madbeth had been performed at the lush, open-air environs of Atul Kumar’s theatre residency, as a featured attraction at the first Kamshet Arts Festival in March in Kamshet, near Mumbai. “That was a lot of fun, as it was scheduled for 4am in the morning, and it was also special because almost the entire theatre community from Mumbai was present there," says Tillu. His brand of wholly improvised spontaneous theatre has much in common with Kumar’s best work with director Rajat Kapoor, which includes the popular Nothing Like Lear, where Shakespearean essences mix freely (and irreverently) with inventive devised elements to create an amorphous art genre that has found many takers. Likewise, Madbeth is nothing like the bard’s darkest tragedy. The title is actually a portmanteau of mad and Beth, the central figure who is schizophrenic and is staging Macbeth as a play within the play.
“I won’t say it is a tribute to Shakespeare in any way, but it’s certainly a tribute to the audience who come and watch theatre," explains the actor. For him each performance is like the premiere of a new show, in what could technically be termed a “here and now" performance, although there is a strong chassis that he can ride upon with unbridled abandon.
Returning to India after more than a decade in Sweden has been a mixed experience for Tillu. The stringent work ethic that he has become accustomed to seems to be woefully missing from the theatre culture here. “What I learnt there was how important it is to dedicate your life to a specialization. Here, we want to do everything in the name of versatility and we start copying other people’s expertise," he says. He also noticed the near absence of art research and experimentation—Europe is a virtual breeding ground for new methods and techniques to tell non-linear stories.
This is particularly important in the context of those theatre practitioners in India who want to eschew the didacticism of text, to create more free-form works. In Tillu’s case, his creativity has invariably flowed from the floor to the script, rather than vice versa.
Devised works are slowly emerging as the season’s flavour in Mumbai theatre, even if many have been ill-considered affairs. Even Tillu’s own Herose Werose, staged as part of Prithvi’s Summertime festival for younger audiences, was underwhelming, and arguably in need of much longer gestation in the sandbox before being deemed performance-worthy.
Tillu defends his use of relatively inexperienced actors: “That was my choice. I have had this long journey, it is better to share it with people whose cups are half-filled than to pour it in jars that are overflowing. I will introspect (on) the results in a year or two." This altruism can be further gleaned from his supervision of the India chapter of Clowns Without Borders, a theatre project for underprivileged children.
Even as Madbeth gears up for more shows, Tillu is already looking ahead to a new collaboration with his good friend Deepal Doshi—a non-verbal dark comedy about two brothers trapped in a space waiting for the right phone call to deliver them to freedom. There is also a new solo piece in the offing, in which he will play two dozen characters or more, based on his flight experiences as a frequent flyer over nine years of international travel.
Perhaps being finally grounded in Mumbai will lead to more rooted works as well.
Madbeth will be performed on 4 July, 8pm, at Experimental Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), NCPA Marg, Nariman Point, Mumbai (66223737). Tickets, ₹ 350 and ₹ 450, available on in.bookmyshow.com.
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