A few days ago, when Malappuram-based Little Earth School of Theatre staged
Bolivian Stars
, a 90-minute-long play that presented our society through a
Sevens football
team, it was quite a novelty for the audience, for its sheer scale of innovation, bravery and novelty in presentation.
The dais transformed from homely interiors to football ground, from galleries with loud cheers to noisy neighbourhoods, not just in spirit but also through realistic props like goal posts. Its characters too both thrilled and scared the viewers as the story progressed through some unconventional realms.
The play, which had 15 actors as its characters, is based on P V Shajikumar’s short story named Maradona. It took shape in November last year and has already seen more than 30 stages, including performances outside of the State. Bolivian Stars’ director Arunlal, who has over 20 years of experience in the field, says, “One feedback that we often get is that our play gives the thrill of watching both a football match and a dramatic tale unfold. And this is precisely what I felt upon reading Shajikumar’s story in 2017. I felt it has the representation of many social issues, presented skilfully through football and that’s what urged me to borrow it for the stage.”
Bolivian Stars’ main characters are football players, who have their own individual issues both on and off the field. One of them is a transgender, another, a girl who disguises herself as a man for the freedom to enjoy a game she wants to play. Then there is a Dalit, a man who does odd jobs, a physically-challenged person and others facing their own individual struggles. And they are all revealed through extremely atypical scenes, which make the viewers empathise with the player’s issues.
For instance, the character of the women in disguise gets revealed when her menstrual cramps blind her with pain, and she bleeds through her clothes, which gets noticed by her teammates. Actress Savithri M aka Ammu, who plays the role, says, “I have been into theatre for almost 10 years, but haven’t done such realistic scenes much on the stage.” She wasn’t the least bit worried about presenting menstruation as real it is, on stage. “At a time when menstruation and the importance of talking about it is discussed on a wide scale, I feel it’s great that we could do our bit too.”
Jishnu K, who plays the character of the transgender, observes that the emotionally experimental nature of the play is something that thrills the audience often. “Probably because we go deep into the psyche of the issues faced by each of these players, audience often say they could feel with the transgender person, the Dalit or the woman as the scenes unfold,” Jishnu says.
Though
Malappuram
’s colloquial language is incorporated in dialogues in a good measure, that doesn’t interfere with the viewers understanding the lines much.
Arunlal says that something that thrills the group at the moment is how quite a few venues, on which they have already performed, has re-booked them. “I feel it’s all thanks to the power of the messages given by Bolivian Stars. Moreover, as the language of football is also a big part of it all, I feel it becomes universally easy for many to connect with each of the players well enough,” he
explains.
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