Kerala’s Tarzan comes to Bengaluru

The fun in noted playwright-director Jayaprakash Kuloor’s latest presentation starts with its title. It’s called Tarzan, in which the ‘z’ and ‘a’ have been struck out to make way for an ‘s’ and ‘o’ superscript that makes it sound like ‘Tarson’ (the son of Tar, denoting something illegitimate) rather than the man of the jungle. It also marks a new chapter in Kerala’s performing arts space, where a clear hierarchy between the stage, TV and the big screen still exists. The play, which explores the interactions between a film producer, who made a movie called Tarzan, and a young man claiming to be his son from a previous relationship, brings two popular film actors - Sunil Sukhada and SP Sreekumar - to the stage.
“In Kerala, the lines between different forms of performing arts are very clear and even if you move from one to the other, you tend to stick to the more lucrative form, like, for instance, theatre actors moving to cinema and never looking back. You will not get to see someone like a Sachin Khedekar in Kerala, so, in that sense, having two film actors do a play marks the beginning of a change,” says actor-theatre activist Prakash Bare, who is bringing the hour-long comedy play to Bengaluru for its first staging here.
To be held later this week at the East Cultural Association in Indiranagar, the Malyalam play features only two artistes, which is a standard that Jayaprakash follows – present maximum drama with minimal props and actors.
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