8/6/2019 Ramanujam Constant

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 THE BE S T A R T S TAY S ON — I N O U R M E M O R I E S A N D L I V E S . T H R O U G H T H I S C O L U M N , W E G E T O U R A R T I S T S , W R I T E R S A N D F I L M - M A K E R S T A L K I N G A B O U T T H E C L A S S I C I N T H E I R H E A D S .

the classicin my head

 Artist Jehangir Jani is fascinated by 

how Sudhir Patwardhan and

 Arpita Singh hold multiple

conversations on a single canvas

arts etc.8 A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 3

There are many artists thatcome to mind, but Sudhir

Patwardhan and ArpitaSingh are perhaps my favourites.

Patwardhan’sStreet Play is asignificant painting. I like how 

the compostion reveals severallayers simultaneously. Thepainting leaves you wondering 

 whether it is a street play or a riotscene. The single figure watch-

ing the scene from behind a pil-lar could be a spectator in either.

I have largely dealt with singlefigures and non-specific loca-

tions, which is all the more rea-son that I admire Patwardhan asan artist. I find that we are both

triggered by politically moti-vated events.

 Arpita Singh, on the otherhand, seems to have a very naive

approach to serious matters.Her portrayal of the ageing fe-

male body is not necessarily very pleasant. There are subtle

suggestions of violence. Of course, her composition draws

from the traditional approach of placing multiple elements onthe periphery of the main sub-

 ject, and I like that. You can havesimultaneous conversations in

one painting.Most of my work also oper-

ates on two levels. At first glance,it looks very accessible. It is only 

on closer inspection that youcome across uncomfortable lay-

ers. People have said that they enter my work feeling good, but

 when the layers unfold, itunsettles them.

My appreciation of their work 

is from the conclusions I havedrawn from what I perceive.

Somewhere, I have imbibed thismethodology of multiple con-

cepts, and this is probably why Ihave an affinity for their work. x

—As told to Deepika Nath 

 W hen British theatre director

Simon McBurney wasdown with a creative block 

in 1998, his Booker-winnerfriend Michael Ondaatje

recommended a curious remedy: GH

Hardy’s essay  A Mathematician’s Apology .McBurney never enjoyed maths in school,

but the book engrossed him. Amid theelegant equations, what floated out toMcBurney was the perennially fascinating 

bit about Hardy’s relationship with thegenius from Madras, Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Ondaatje’s cure worked. It became thestarting point of McBurney’s play  A 

Disappearing Number .

Complicite, the experimental theatrecompany founded by McBurney along 

 with Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni in1983, is bringing the play to India, to coincide

 with the International Congress of Mathemati-cians that begins in Hyderabad on August 19.

McBurney, who has directed A Disappear-ing Number , says he lived with the idea fornearly a decade before it premiered in Lon-

don in 2007. When his close friend and actorKatrin Cartlidge died, he revisited the final

chapter of the Hardy-Ramanujan collabora-tion and the death of Ramanujan in 1920, atthe age of 3 2. When Complicite first toured

India to stage Shakespeare’s Measure for Mea-sure in 2005, McBurney “travelled to Madras

to meet people who knew Ramanujan’s widow and find out more about his life”.

In the play, he frames the Hardy-Ramanu-

 jan story in a contemporary narrative of a

maths lecturer who travels to India to traceRamanujan’s life. It also uses Ramanujan andHardy’s breakthroughs in the field o f partition

numbers as a device to talk about other kindsof partitions —cultural and political.

Before McBurney takes the play to Hyder-abad, he will stage it in Mumbai for three days

from August 9. Sanjna Kapoor, director of Prithvi Theatre, says it has been her dream tobring  A Disappearing Number to India, but

she was initially daunted by the huge cost

that a play of such a large scale would involve.

“I was moved to tears when I saw it at the Bar-bican Centre in London in 2007. Still, I was

not sure about hosting it in India,” she says.But recently, professor MS Raghunathan of 

the Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchinformed her about the International Con-gress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, an

ideal backdrop for a Ramanujan play. “We just couldn’t miss this chance,” says Kapoor.

She first watched a Complicite play 12

 years ago on the recommendation of her

aunt, the British actor Felicity Kendal. Inter-actions with Complicite continued over the

 years, mostly through faxed messages. When the company first came to Mumbai with Measure for Measure , they performed

at the 1,100-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theatreand theatregoers were blown away. Then

McBurney, to Kapoor’s delight, unexpect-edly added Prithvi Theatre to the schedule.

The intimate space of Prithvi was unable to

accommodate the original production, buthe staged a stripped-down version of theplay. “Still the impact remained the same —

all shows ran houseful. That’s the genius of McBurney,” says Kapoor.

Complicite is quite like the boho McBurney.Though considered to be one of the world’s toptheatre groups and one which changed the vo-

cabulary of contemporary British theate, itcalls itself an evolving ensemble of performers

and still doesn’t have a building of its own.“The advantage is that we can pop up

anywhere and follow our agenda,” saysMcBurney. He trained under the French actorJacques Lecoq, famous for his methods in

physical theatre, and has never denied his

teacher’s influence. Complicite addstechnology to narrative text, music to move-ments to create a strong visual and auralimpact. Its repertoire of over 40 productions

include adaptations of Samuel Beckett andShakespeare and Haruki Murakami’s short

stories The Elephant Vanishes . A Disappearing Number has several actors

from the Indian diaspora, including FirdausBamji, Paul Bhattacharjee, Hiren Chate,Divya Kasturi, Chetna Pandya and Shane

Shambhu, and the music is composed by Nitin Sawhney. “We wanted to show 

Ramanujan’s feeling of exile in Cambridgethrough a cast that can express the reality of migration,” says McBurney.

The play was shown at the Lincoln CenterFestival in New York early this year. After the

India tour, the company will return toLondon’s West End.x

The Hardy-Ramanujan story comes to India as a play.Maverick British director Simon McBurney’s  A Disappearing Number is the added attraction to the 

International Congress of Mathematicians ■ A LAKA S AHANI

Points of view 

Scenes from the play; (above right) director Simon McBurney

The Ramanujan

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