Egle and Cleopatra

Synopsis

The drama AGLEYUM CLIYOPATRAYUM (Egle and Cleopatra) is a solo performance in Malayalam Written, Directed, and Designed by Chandradasan, enacted by Pooja Mohanraj, and Performed by Lokadharmi Kochi, Kerala, based on the Lithuanian myth of Egle and William Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra. This play was premiered in Changampuzha Park Edappalli Kochi on 23rd August 2014..

Directors Note

Agleyum Cleopatrayum (Egle & Cleopatra), is a one-actor performance inspired by the folk myth of Egle from Lithuania and William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The experience of the two characters Cleopatra and Egle are entwined together to probe into the different manifestations of love. Both Cleopatra and Egle were victims of Love; love with different facades and connotations. The experiences of these two characters from two different cultures times and spaces are reconnoitered so as to extrapolate and explore the contemporary female experience.

The love of Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt seems to contain a venomous strain. Cleopatra, ‘the charming serpent of Nile’ remain a mystery; she cleverly uses the unparalleled sensuality of her body to make men kneel at her whims and fancies. Here love is highly sensual with ecstasies of physicality, wild streams of fantasy, and extreme romanticism.

Why Cleopatra fell in love with all those men – from Caesar to Antony – who came across her? Was Cleopatra a sexual maniac with infinite shades of lust? She identifies love as the ‘most delicious poison’, as ‘an excellent falsehood’ or a ‘riotous madness’. It seems that the love act of Cleopatra is not merely to satisfy her carnal instincts, but also is a defence mechanism to protect her country from enemies and invaders and colonisers. Cleopatra uses her unmatched talents and perspicacity in the art of love to conquer the conqueror. She calls herself as ‘Egypt’ and her desire is to be buried in the mud and waters of Egypt than taken to the royal courts of Rome; this reinforces that her act of love may be a political armour to defeat the invader. There is no escape for the invader from this enchanting queen, and her infinite scheme of seductions. But the tragedy is that in the end Cleopatra herself falls as the victim of her own prangs of passion, and emotional ecstasies. The hunt and prey merges to be one; and as always the ultimate loser is Cleopatra, the female.

On the contrary Egle the mythical character from Lithuania, who is forced to marry a snake is a simple farmer girl with all the innocence of a forest breeze. She had no choice to make, but marry Zilvinas, the serpent prince and go to his amber castle beneath the sea. She adapted herself to this alien environment and started living there happily. After few years she endeavours to visit her home to meet her folks. The condition to Zilvinas was that she shall not reveal the name of her husband; she should come to the sea and call his name to return to their abode. If he is alive ‘may the sea foam milk, if dead may the sea foam blood.’ But as she returns, he comes as a stream of blood, a sign that her promise had been broken. Brothers have got his name from the youngest child and they killed him to ‘save her from the clutches of a snake and save the family honour’.  Engulfed in inexplicable outpour of emotion which empowers her, she transforms herself into a deep rooted evergreen fir tree, instead of returning with her folk.

This performance do not narrate the whole story but is trying to portray the emotional experiences and ecstasies of both Cleopatra and Egle at three crucial situations each. Scenes chosen from Cleopatra’s story are the parting of Antony from her, her response to Antony’s marriage with Octavia and the final moments when she discerns about Antony’s death and her suicide. Egle scenes are the forceful acceptance of Zilvinas as her husband and travelling to the castle beneath the sea, her loneliness and desire to visit her parents and the journey back, and finally where she realises the sad death of Zilvinas and her transforming into the fir tree.

The tormenting experience of these two characters are performed by a single actor to create a physical theatre charged with emotion. The performance and scenic design invokes a kind of ritualistic theatre; the tempo gradually increases, before reaching the peak. The actor shifts and transforms smoothly from the narrator, Cleopatra, Egle, and Zilvinas; the changes and shifts in time, space and character takes place spontaneously in a continuous harmonium as in the indigenous performance tradition of India. The intimate viewing in a sandwiched space adds to this immediacy of experience that provokes the spectator to complete the enacted poetry.

Egle grows from a simple country girl to a powerful person who can transform herself into an evergreen fir tree, while Cleopatra the all-powerful enchantress queen, falls down from the heights of a charming dreamy life and kills herself in the end using serpent’s venom. Though they live different terraces of experiences, they are knit together with the serpent motif; the living ritual practice of the serpent cult in Kerala in turn, merges the distance in time and space of fiction/ myth to the contemporary performance ethos. The performance takes place around a Sarpakalam, – the traditional/ritualistic practice of floral painting of Kerala, done with natural color powders. This Kalam drawn with motifs of stylized figures of snake gods, drawn in white, black, yellow, green, and ochre gives a rare vitality with shades of old-world magic, reminiscent of a primitive mystique drama of human passions and divine connotations. The knotted, twining serpents cast a spell to create an ambiance of pulsating and evocative prelude to the ecstatic drama and links it to the depths of racial memory, both of the performer and the spectator. Towards the end of the performance, the actress gets into a kind of trance with a swaying dance-like movement, with white bunches of Arica nut buds in her hands and wipes off the kalam. This culmination in a trance-like situation lifts the whole scene/atmosphere to a voyage beyond space and time; the viewers are transported into a world of magic with the fragrance of myth, fact, and fantasy. The ambiance of the design completes and complements this ritual experience. Still, it is an actor’s theatre; love, anger, frustration, misery – all the feelings were expressed in the same purest form. The ritual itself is looked at as a tool to connect the actor’s system and transform it into a voyage to a stream of emotional flow.

The play is complemented by Salim Nair’s “Elegy for two Queens”, a composition in six movements that blends the classical Indian and Western approaches to music.

Few visual artists will be painting their emotional response to the enactment while the performance is on, thus by adding to the wholesome experience. Well-known artists T.Kaladharan, CS Jayaram, VB Venu and Shobha Menon joined the premiere performance with live painting.

Painting, ritual, myth, enactment, dramatic text, music, lighting, and design all supplement each other to create a multi-layered ambiance/experience of viewing/performance.

This is an extension of my production of “Egle and Cleopatra” which I designed and directed in Lithuania with Lina Jankauskaite as the actor for “Anima Mundi”, the International Art Festival 2013. The production was the result of an intercultural collaboration between my experience and perception of life and theatre with the reality, cultural and historical ethos of Lithuania, trying to understand each other and arrive at a common performance language.

Credit

Set- Bhanuvajanan • Nagakkalam-  Ajesh Pulluvan Mala • Art & Costumes- Shobha Menon • Lighting Design- Srikanth Cameo • Lighting- Jolly Antony • Music- Salim Nair • Script, Sources- The Lithuanian Myth Of Egle &William Shakespeare’s Antony And Cleopatra • Script, Design & Direction- Chandradasan

Actor

Pooja Mohanraj