Hayavadana - 2002
Hayavadana was Alter Ego's first production
Playwright: Girish Karnad
Director: Bhavna Thakur
Alter Ego's first production was Girish Karnad's Hayavadana or The Talking Horse, an Indian play performed in English with primarily South Asian performers. A plot and sub-plot that intertwine to explore the tricky questions of identity and the nature of reality; the clever incorporation of motifs from traditional theatre; Yakshagana, a play within a play, dolls, masks; the irreverent inversion of mock-heroic mores.
The play is centered around the philosophical question of whether an individual's identity is derived from the head or the body, and raises issues of perfection and imperfection, of contentment and dissatisfaction. The story is told by Bhagavata who plays the multi-functional role of a stage manager, music director and narrator. The main plot is about two friends Devadatta and Kapila, who both fall in love with Padmini. Padmini in turn, falls in love with both of them. Jealousy and suspicion soon leads to a double suicide by both men in a scene that is more comic than tragic. They are brought back to life by the goddess Kali but with their heads exchanged on the other's body. The rest of the play focuses on how the bodies gradually transform to match the heads and how Padmini is again left with discontent. A subplot running through the play is the story of Hayavadana, the talking horse born with a horse's head and a human body who wants to become totally human. Other characters in the play are the stage hands and musicians that Bhagavata directs and the talking dolls that provide comic relief and provide psychological commentary on the play's inquiry.
The play was performed in the style of street theater, drawing upon traditions of rural folk theater as well as anti-naturalist and fantasy traditions in western theater. A colorful story of lives that are universal in human failings, desire and needs and one that transcends time and boundaries of race, language and culture.
See the trailer of the play below:
Girish Karnad's Hayavadana was staged at the Present Company Theatorium