Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston
Contact: (773) 539-7838;
www.rasakatheatre.org, $25
Through Oct. 23
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
From Thanksgiving to Labor Day last year, I read nothing but Indian writers. The Namesake, The Death of Vishnu, The God of Small Things, The Interpreter of Maladies, Maximum City, everything by Chitra Divakaruni—I devoured them all and barely scratched the thinnest part of the uppermost layer of an infinitely complex and perhaps not completely knowable world.
But India, like so many ‘other’ places that mystify and bedazzle westerners, has universal stories to tell.
One of them is William Kovacsik’s adaptation of The Masrayana, now unfolding in a rich, beguiling production by the Rasaka Theatre Company in association with the Prop Thtr Group.
Directed by Anish Jethmalani—a formidable talent whose work is worth watching whether he’s acting or directing—The Masrayana is a fable of 10,000 dead people; a legion of the invisible and the forgotten, who by dint of their own perseverance and bravery, reclaim joy, vitality and respect in the land of the living.
And, oh yes, this fable is true.
It begins when Gopal Masra (Bobby Zeman) is declared dead by his younger brother. Officials are bribed, a death certificate is issued, and suddenly Masra has lost his farm, his home, and his very right to earn a living. Arguably, his predicament is worse than that of the 150 million Untouchables in India—unlike those beneath the bottom rung of the caste system, Masra’s existence isn’t even acknowledged.
When Masra screams for someone to hear his voice, the anguish on Zeman’s subtly expressive face carries the weight of a thousand futile screams into a hurricane.
It’s here that the universality of the tale makes its first hit: Show me someone who hasn’t been reduced to despair’s nadir by a world/person/bureaucrat who refuses to hear them, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t been born.
The Masrayana is an epic story, following Masra’s journey across India in an attempt to reclaim his life. Gorgeously enriching the narrative is the vibrant, sensuous choreography of Alka Nayyar, whose dances provide both a lush vitality and—in one jaw-dropping scene—a haunting, macabre masque of living death.
Equally valuable is Michelle Tesdall’s costume design of lavishly draped rainbow-colored saris and ghostly tattered shrouds. Completing the environment is composer Nikhil Trivedi’s work on the sitar, which blends with recorded music to create an atmosphere of wonder.
All of which is not to say The Masrayana is flawless. The epic story would be told by a larger cast. When actors playing significant characters double in smaller parts, the effect is distracting. Then there’s the narrator, whose exposition punctuates the action. He needs to be telling the story, not reading it out of an ordinary brown binder.
Even so, the story of Gopal Masra’s demand for justice—which is evocative of similar demands made by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi—is piercing.
When Masra speaks of the millions of people around the world who are invisible and unheard, it makes one ponder:
Almost exactly one a year ago, monsoon season floods left 10 million West Bengal Indians and Bangladeshis homeless. The flood killed thousands more as two-thirds of Bangladesh was submerged.
The flooding victims of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi have been heard loud and clear recently, and that’s great.
Their predecessors across the ocean? They’ve long since dropped off the news page. We don’t hear them anymore. It’s as if they were all dead.
Windy City Times theater editor Jonathan Abarbanal was a line producer on The Masrayana.