Reflections on a play - Adbhut

I watched the play called Adbhut last Sunday.
It was indeed Adbhut – phenomenal.  Very
few productions choose to break the fourth wall and involve and interact with
the audience. Such attempts are risky and need a lot of conviction and effort of
an actor.  It requires acknowledging the
presence of a diverse audience who can make or break the flow and content of
the play.  After acknowledging their
presence, the actor needs to identify the actors from within the audience that
suits the need of the play.  While the
actor knows the specifications of screening, the audience need not know that
how and why are they chosen for their contribution.  This screening requires a lot of subtlety as
different characters need different characteristics as the spontaneity of the
audience and improvisation of an actor needs to match for a good performance. Once
identified and informed, the actor needs to weave the entry and exit of such
audience actors perfectly well to keep the momentum up.  This is most crucial. This is the most important
part of the actual breaking of the fourth wall in which the actor incorporates
the scripted elements with the unscripted inputs of the audience actors with
subtly and confidence. The unscripted elements of interactions need to be managed
in such a way and with a level of authority that the rest of the audience
remains connected to the flow and content of the script. The ability to
remember, retain, recall, and represent the script of the monologue plus a lot of
continuous improvisation is courageous and taxing on an actor. It needs
incredible improvisation, responding to the emerging situations, and inputs
from the audience. All in all, the aspect of breaking the fourth wall in
theater requires a lot of careful effort before and during the actual performance.
 RJ Devaki in Adbhut did it all so wonderfully.

The supreme element of Devaki in this was her
confidence.  She generally wears her confidence
on her sleeves. In all her public avatars – be it as an RJ or as a performer in
plays like Kasturba, Akoopar, Samudramathan, or Dhad, or merely as a celebrity
in a talk shows – she oozes out confidence. She is a celebrity and is conscious
of it. Her celebrityhood does not sit lightly on her. Her audience finds it
difficult to not get affected by her aura and her vibes. In all other performances,
except Kasturba, Devaki performed a role of rural and marginalized – and yet empowered
– woman. Adbhut in some sense gave her a natural playfield as she was playing
an urban middle-class youth, something that she is and can relate to well. So,
here was an urbane celebrity in casual wear reaching out to a similar urban
audience of all ages capitalizing on her celebrityhood. This element of
distributing notes to different people across the audience and then reaching
out to them from time to time by mingling with them added to the attraction of
the performance.  Devaki as a performer
took efforts to not only connect to her audience, she empowered the fellow actors
that she chose from within the audience. The ‘RJ Devaki’ may appear as an intimidating
celebrity, but ‘Devaki- the performer’ made her audience and fellow amateur performers
at ease through gestures and pep talks, involving all of us – in singing,
dancing, and high-five-ing -  beyond remaining
mere spectators.  She was well prepared
with her script that required her to call out random but systemic numbers from
1 to 10 lac that connects with the individual audience. Remembering such
numbers with their actual content requires a lot of memorizing and retrieval. While
Devaki was ably managing her script, notes, props, she was also amazingly at
ease in interacting with the audience responding to their verbal and non-verbal
reactions. She acted and interacted with a lot of amazingly beautiful
improvisations.  She held the space for
her audience allowing them to settle down on stage and helping them to rise to
her level of performance. When needed, she was quick to lower her pedestal to
come down to the level of the fellow actor to enable them to perform while successfully
weaving it all into the script. Being a monologue performer, she did not have
any sense of competition. Being a celebrity and also having known it so well,
she did appear seeking any form of validation from her audience. Despite the
script allowing for a scope, Devaki as a performer did not show any tendency to
preach through her monologue. That enabled her to become a friend by side rather
than a sage on the stage.

Such a connection also did a lot more service
to the cause of mental health, the theme of the play. Issues that the play
talked about are needed to be discussed in normal settings at home.  It hits the chord when Deepika Padukone tells
us about her own experiences of dealing with depression in the form of little
cute advertisements requesting us to ‘Dubara puchho – ask again’.  Audiences get sensitized towards mental health
issues when RJ Devaki tells the same through a request at the end of the play.

Adbhut is a good mix of well-intentioned and well-throughout
script, fascinating direction, amazing acting, and incredible use of the space
called stage with all its elements, including all of us.