How does one person’s truth become the others? Are truths based on hiding each others lies to hide from persecution? Is one persons truth, another’s lie or another’s lie ones truth? And then we talk about history and being on the right side of it. Or the left, or the centre or the liberal. The famous words of Walter Benjamin ring in our ears, ‘History is always written by the victor and histories of the vanquished belong to a shrinking circle of those who were there’. The blood flown and bodies burned are forgotten and the shoes in the museum or baggages of the dead displayed as its remains.
Forgetting, they say, is essential to remembering. But what do we forget, how and what do we remember? Traumas run through generations and peak their heads up every once in a while. And there is therapy and art and the so called all encompassing high cultured arts practices like the opera! Taking Sides, written by the British playwright Ronald Harwood, plucks all these chords, one by one, creating a melody of chaotic human brains and behavior caught in the middle of the denazification commission. Through the confrontations and interrogations between Dr. Furtwangler and Major Steve Arnold, or Steve as he prefers him to be called, Taking Sides puts forth a contemporary question – Is art and are artists political? Is art separated from politics? The questions arising from the post-Nazi Germany errily resonate with twenty first century India, especially the last few years.
Staged in Pune at The Box on 5th and 6th February, Atul Kumar’s immersive direction draws the audience seating all around the performance space into a whirlpool of emotions and ideological sides and at the same time like a centrifugal force throws the audience into questioning whose sides they would be on. Courage to defy and go against the propaganda is underlined through the distressed character of Arnold brilliantly played by Sukant Goel, who keeps hammering the characters of Rode (played by Kashin Shetty) and Furtwangler about their line of business and association with the Nazi Party. The projected genocide images and video clips from Nazi Germany of bodies dumped into large pits by JCBs and their burning stamps the viewers minds long after the performance ends. Simple, yet dramatic light design by Rahul Joglekar lights up the performance space creating a neutral ground for confrontations and projecting the trauma that characters have gone through. Atul Kumar embodies elegantly the character of the conductor, Dr. Wilhelm Furtwangler or as Steve prefers to call him ‘the band leader’. The subtleness of his performance aids in creating the mystery of story. The entire ensemble gives a brilliant performance, notably Sukant Goel, Atul Kumar and Richa Jain who push and pull the audience into the performance and urge them to question various sides.
Aishwarya Walvekar 