Morning Raga , livre ebook

Mahesh Dattani
Morning Raga A Screenplay

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Morning Raga A Screenplay
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
COLLECTED PLAYS VOLUME TWO
Mahesh Dattani, born in Bangalore on 7 August 1958 studied in Baldwin s High School and St. Joseph s College of Arts and Science, Bangalore.
He has worked as a copywriter in an advertising firm and subsequently with his father in the family business. His theatre group Playpen was formed in 1984, and he has directed several plays for them, ranging from classical Greek to contemporary works. In 1986, he wrote his first full-length play, Where There s a Will , and from 1995, he has been working full-time in theatre. In 1998, he set up his own theatre studio dedicated to training and showcasing new talents in acting, directing and stage writing, the first in the country to specifically focus on new works.
Dattani is also a film-maker and his films have been screened in India and abroad to critical and public acclaim. His film Dance Like a Man has won the award for the Best Picture in English awarded by the National Panorama.
In 1998, Dattani won the Sahitya Akademi award for his book of plays Final Solutions and Other Plays , published by East-West Books Chennai, thus becoming the first English language playwright to win the award.
Dattani teaches theatre courses at the summer sessions programme of Portland State University, Oregon, USA, and conducts workshops regularly at his studio and elsewhere. He also writes plays for BBC Radio 4.
He lives in Bangalore.
Morning Raga
A Screenplay

A Note on the Play
I was beginning to get curious about Mahesh Dattani. His plays had well-etched characterizations with an overarching angst running through, that made them stand apart from the light comic variety flooding the market. An original writer is a fast vanishing breed. Mahesh belonged to that rare species. I planned to meet him but couldn t.
And suddenly, out of the blue, I get a call in London, where I am holidaying, from Mahesh Dattani. He is directing a film! His words tumble out of him. It s about a meeting of two worlds, he explains. A story that brings together the modern and the traditional, unites the past with the present, Carnatic music with Western music, fate and coincidence with individual choices. He wants me to play one of the central characters, a Carnatic singer, Swarnalatha, who lives with an anguished past.
The film is to be produced by Raghavendra Rao, a producer-director I have shared a terrific rapport with since Kamyaab , a film we did together eighteen years ago. Mahesh has roped in Rajeev Menon, a cinematographer I have great respect for.
I evince interest and request him to send me the script. It arrives. Neatly bound. Running into what seems like a thousand pages! I turn the pages over quickly to read Swarnalatha s scenes. Very few lines. Lots of subtext. I am comforted. I now read the script carefully. An emotional current grips me as I read it, even though it is overstated in places. I have questions and Mahesh seems almost delighted to answer them. He comes over to meet me in Mumbai. Why me? is the first question I ask. I don t know a thing about Carnatic music. Why do you want to take a risk with me when there are so many talented south Indian actors who would look and sound the part? Mahesh replies: I know I have quite a choice of actors from the south who are more familiar with the milieu. But to me there are several booby traps laid out even before I start if I were to choose from them. Firstly, some gestures and mannerisms. They would be taken for granted. I want the inner movements, adding psychological dimensions that manifest themselves in gesture and behaviour. I need consistency in style. And my other principal actors Prakash and Perizaad have studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg School in New York.
I am convinced this is worth exploring further. He has thrown up a challenge and I rise to the bait. I pick up the script and read it again. Mahesh s screenplay makes emotional transitions between the lines rather than through dialogue. For instance, in the scene where Abhinay s father confronts Swarnalatha in the fields and asks her to back off from his son because her music will take him nowhere, Swarnalatha is enraged at this insult to music. But she doesn t say a word to his father. She turns to Abhinay and says I will sing for you. That one line says it all-it contains the entire history of the inter-personal relationships between the characters.
However, other scenes are not so clear. Mahesh and I disagree over the interior life of Swarnalatha. She seems to grieve over her friend s death much more than her own son Madhav s! We need to establish a deep friendship between Swarnalatha and Vaishnavi without devouring cinematic space. Swarnalatha holds herself responsible for Vaishnavi s death because she pushed a reluctant Vaishnavi into making that trip to the city on that fateful bus journey. It s a big back-story that continues to be discussed and reworked even after we have actually started shooting. Rajeev Menon suggests we compress it in the first song Maate . . .
I try to persuade Mahesh to give up the Madhav track altogether but he can t bear the thought, so we struggle on . . . Mahesh wants Swarnalatha s sense of loss for her own son to be buried and forgotten. He wants the flood gates to open only towards the end after she comes to terms with her loss and guilt. What Mahesh has kept in the final cut is far less complicated than what he originally had in mind but I think it works.
A script must serve many masters and accomplish many purposes. Mahesh is generous enough to accept that it is a collaborative process. Ultimately the value of any script always comes back to its role as the plan or blueprint for the film. In Densham s words, It s the script that provides the magic that brings together a group of people and it all comes from the imagination of the writer. That s the purpose of a script. In a sense, it s a magic carpet, where everybody that you need will climb on board that idea or dream and bring it to reality on the screen. 1
According to Frank Pearson, a screenplay means different things to different people. The producer weighs it for audience appeal , the director visualizes it as a progression of images and scenes , the designer tries to fit it into locations and sets, the actor is intent to learn his lines and the assistant director sees it as a schedule. They read the screenplay like a flea lives on a dog, without caring much what the whole dog looks like. 2
I can t help but agree with what Frank Pearson says. But as a professionally trained actor with thirty years of experience behind me, I struggle to look at the larger picture which is what attracted me to the script of Morning Raga in the first place.
Mahesh enjoys working with actors. It helps that Perizaad and Prakash are professionally trained. (Much as I try, I find it difficult to deal with amateurs. I think directors who cast amateurs in lead parts are arrogant!)
Rehearsals with Prakash and Mahesh are fruitful in ironing out most of the creases: some of them are my own blocks and some have to do with the script. The three major scenes with Prakash are fine-tuned by Mahesh as we rehearse and improvise. The first meeting between Swarnalatha and Abhinay has seen several drafts. Mahesh is careful to keep the violin as a centre of attention in all the drafts to heighten the conflict of the past, suggesting rather than explaining what is on Swarnalatha s mind-that she holds herself responsible for the death of Abhinay s mother and suspects he might have returned to blame her for it. But Abhinay doesn t. He is too preoccupied with starting his music group. The invitation to sing takes Swarnalatha completely by surprise. With it come the demons from the past, a theme that recurs in Mahesh s work. Mahesh, like all writers, treats his script like he would treat his child. But he realizes that other people are needed to help his child grow up.
I figure that unless I get the Carnatic music totally right, no amount of obsessing over Swarnalatha s interior world will make her appear credible. Mahesh introduces me to an exceptionally gifted violinist, Ranjani (who he also casts as Vaishnavi, my friend in the film), to give me music lessons. I am scared to death when I first hear the music and am convinced I will never get it right. It is entirely due to Ranjani s painstaking efforts that I succeed in lip-synching the intricate swarams. Carnatic music has rigid mathematical equations which cannot be compromised even as the singer improvises. Swarnalatha can hold her own with Western percussions so effortlessly because of her rigorous training.
Rajeev Menon s mother is a Carnatic singer and he loves Carnatic music to death. He helps me with the posture and the gestures of the musician. Meanwhile Prakash has worked tirelessly on learning to play the violin like a real professional. Perizaad is a trained ballet dancer and doesn t fault on a single beat. Shaleen is an actual drummer and Vivek does a convincing act of playing the electronic guitar. The Pratibimb band is ready and raring to go.
The shooting of the climax song is scheduled for the last three days. When I arrive on location, there is tension in the air. Mahesh wants to redo the scene preceding the climax song. He decides to go with the song first and then think of what the scene will be. Mahesh is furiously writing out several drafts and looks a wreck. Rajeev is screaming at his assistants. Perizaad s skirt is too tight. Latha (the production designer) is unhappy because the vinyl she s used for the backdrop is wrinkling up. Shobhu, the producer is chewing up his nails. I find myself ticking off my make-up artist for no fault of his. The tension in the air is so thick you can slice it with a knife. I walk up to Rajeev and say, I m really insecure about doing