Playwright takes the stage to voice dissent

CHENNAI: A lover of arts, who questions its relevance, and delves deep into it to find answers -Gowri Ramnarayan's focus has been simple through her career. Play wright, theatre director, journalist, translator, vocal accompanist to legendary Carnatic musician M S Subbulakshmi, the 66-year-old has had experiences that are difficult to fit into one lifetime.
Initiated to the arts as a student at the Kalakshetra Foundation, she was exposed early to the natural integration of dance, drama and music.Her tryst as a journalist taught her the importance of questioning, the decade as an accompanist to MS strengthened her musical core, but the stage has been her creati ve cornerstone. Celebrating a decade of her theatre group JustUs Repertory, Ramanarayan is launching her anthology of six plays -'Dark Horse & Other Plays' at the Amethyst on Saturday.
“This anthology is a kind of a record of the journey of the past decade,“ says Ramnarayan for whom the “theatre has been a place to raise questions, express my fears, aspirations, and gain a better awareness about the realities around me“.
Steeped with metaphors, Ramnarayan uses music when words fall short, and dance where actions cease to express.
Her first play 'Dark Horse', written in 2004, an unusual tribute to Marathi poet Arun Kolatkar, who she had met once years ago, was more a means to raise concerns about the role of an artist in the midst of consumerist frenzy. But while the dramatist has scripted dance theatre, and staged plays on subjects spanning mythology, ancient history, and contemporary issues like tiger con servation, her concerns seem to be similar. “Though the context of my first play `Dark Horse' and the last one 'When Things Fall Apart', based on characters of `Mahabharata', were completely different, both spoke about disintegration of values and what makes life meaningful,“ says Ramnarayan, whose anthology is available at sruti.com The idea of dissent is the centre of all her work. “Theatre is a form of protest for me. It is where I can break rules, question realities and at the same time find a creative connection through my actors and the audience,“ says the playwright, who is excited to take her play on eroding environment and tribal cultures, 'Night's End', to a mainstream London audience at Soho theatre at the end of next month.