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The Madras Players presents a stage adaptation of Manu Joseph's 'Serious Men'
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Nikhila Kesavan, a Chennai-based theatre director known for her adaptations of popular English novels, loved the “dramatic potential and theatricality" of Manu Joseph’s novel Serious Men and decided to write its stage version.
Like her earlier adaptations, which include Eve Ensler’s Necessary Targets, Shandana Minhas’ Tunnel Vision, Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story A Temporary Matter and Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, Serious Men the play, is a summation rather than a transliteration. She keeps the essence of the hallowed world of science, with its earthly betrayals and conflicts. “Having adapted a few novels to the stage, I could see that the book has immense dramatic potential—on the personal and social levels," says Kesavan.
Serious Men is about two unusually clever men—the frosty and daunting Brahmin astrophysicist Arvind Acharya, and his wily Dalit assistant Ayyan Mani. Their paths to transcend the lives they lead and the reasons for their atonement are different, but one would not unravel without the other. While Ayyan tries to help his wife and son escape an unremarkable life lived in their one-room home in the famous BDD chawl in Mumbai, Acharya, a legendary astronomer who almost won the Nobel Prize, is busy understanding the universe and discovering alien life. The play is mostly set in the Institute of Theory and Research where Ayyan works as Acharya’s personal assistant. A catalyst in the story is Aditya Mani, Ayyan’s 10-year-old son, who appears to be a scientific genius.
Kesavan’s father was a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and Bangalore, and the world that Joseph creates in his novel was already somewhat familiar to her. Kesavan believes artists and scientists are similarly mad.
The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, invited Kesavan and her team to perform at their premises after its premiere in Chennai last week. The NCBS will present it as part of their programme “Science and Society", and the play is open to the public.
It is produced by The Madras Players, India’s oldest English theatre group, now in its 59th year. In its initial years, The Madras Players was a hub for young theatre enthusiasts, mostly students—a play-reading group established by the British Council to promote English language theatre. Their early efforts were confined to Shakespeare and classic British and American plays. Between 1963 and 1970, when Girish Karnad worked in the city, he played an active role in The Madras Players as an actor, director and translator. In 2000, the group celebrated the year of the Chennai playwright—presenting, through workshops, the works of emerging playwrights in the city. The group has produced more than 250 productions and retains its focus on encouraging English plays on Indian themes.
Kesavan has been with the group, and has worked with its actors, ever since she began as a theatre director. Actors from the group, Smrithi Parameswar, P.C. Ramakrishna, Indrani Krishnaier, Kamala Krish, M. Kaushik, Mohamed Yusuf and others, are part of the cast of Serious Men.
Kesavan, in her early 30s, is one of the few emerging Indian writers adapting novels about India, written in English, into plays. And often successfully, like her version of the Bhagat potboiler—performed across campuses and auditoriums in cities in the south.
Serious Men will be staged at 3pm today, at Dasheri Auditorium, National Centre for Biological Sciences, inside the University of Agricultural Sciences GKVK Campus, Bellary Road, Bangalore. Click here for passes.
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