First things first: Do not, do not, do not miss Mahabharata, Parts 1 and 2, now at the Shaw Festival until March 26.
Of course, you might read Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti, in which this production is anchored, instead, and leave it at that, having explored a much-praised book. But you will then miss an experience that says aloud in a variety of voices, “This is your world, indeed your own life, with all its idiocies, vanities, cruelties, death, and pointlessness,” a production that finally asks, in endless summations of human madness, “And now what?”.
You will miss a dazzling and gripping production that takes you into its universe and works you over, security by security, truth by truth, and leaves you vulnerable, changed, thinking deeply.
Of course, the story is 4,000 years old, five hours of memorable theatre here in two parts, and complex with its endless characters and plot twists passed down to us through time. Storyteller tells the audience, warns the audience, at one point, “Don’t be confused by the plots…. within the river of stories flows infinite wisdom.”
Of course, while watching this Mahabharata, we think of Putin, Hitler, Stalin, and a never-ending line of butchers and murderers for whom our species is known. Of course, while watching, we think of Donald Trump, Doug Ford, Pierre Poilievre and the unyielding pointlessness of small men who talk big.
In this traditional tale from another world and its unfamiliar realities, we gradually find our own way, but that discovery doesn’t free us, nor does it compel the world to release its grip on our thinking and feeling. We exist and the world will destroy us somehow. We know that, we see that on this stage.
I found myself surprised by the potent effect of the intensely etched characters before us, each one a compelling individual, each one a life in a personal universe. I was held throughout by the direction of Ravi Jain, with associate Miriam Fernandes, that created the many peopled visual dimensions before us, all shaped with honed dramatic smarts and a subtle sense of effect.
Indeed, I connected with this production for many personal reasons.
Miriam Fernandes as Storyteller certainly held me transfixed with each word she spoke, with each meaning her intense eyes expressed, and I was transported into the mythical world she created. She also took me back to days far away when my maternal grandmother told me stories at bedtime in Ukrainian and when my father would satisfy my ceaseless requests for the Bremen Town Musician with an animated telling. Yes, we do love and indeed need – that overused word again – some “narrative” in our lives
I connected because Shekar from Mysore, who became the dearest of lifelong friends in university, once told my as-yet-to-be wife of now fifty-six years that she should marry me. Later he suggested the name Sumitra for one of our dear cats.
I connected because Dan, a university acquaintance, found himself in the back seat of our car one day reciting Savitri by Sri Aurobindo. Dan had met The Mother at an ashram in India and this day talked me into reading his gift of Savitri, which I tried, I did try….but such wasn’t my world.
I do have better luck connecting, however, with friend Brenda Bell, Brenda who once was a renowned belly dancer called Badia Star at a posh hotel in Cairo and who, needing more spiritual meaning, returned to Canada to become a sincerely informed yoga practitioner and teacher, a Reiki master, and the best Shiatsu practitioner in the world – just ask my back.
Brenda and I sometimes talk of her many teachers and esoteric books, but I guess I’m more into the existentialist “now” of my life than the workings of Karma in Brenda’s world, although in university I did read both Heidegger and the Baghavad Gita.
I guess I’m saying all this because the production of Mahabharata at Shaw has a place to go in my psyche, a world made by my past that is real to me and therefore makes the production real.
I once had the pleasure of interviewing Ravi Shankar, on a couch in North York of all places, and I liked the guy partly because he called me James Bond and partly because I always responded immediately to his playing of the sitar.
But the Indian who provides for me a reality in which to dwell as a genuine self is the master of the sarod, Ali Akbar Khan, whom I once interviewed as we sat on the side of a bed in Mississauga and smoked our cigarettes.
I listen to the music of Ali Akbar Khan and feel real in both a new and old way, feel alive ironically in this world of death and human insanity. My body moves instinctively with each alap and raga, and my life seems at home, for now, with itself.
Whatever the world is and however else I am in it, I am still alive in it, and, as one alive, I must dance with whatever the winds blow my way.
Perhaps that’s the power of this production. We are told in this Mahabharata not to struggle to get the characters “right” in our heads, but to sense an ineffable meaning of things taking shape perhaps within our grasp, however wondrous or horrible they might be.
We listen to the truly ethereal voice of Meher Pavri singing the Bhagavad Gita and are stunned by the beauty of such sound. We think of the words she sings, “The fight is not out there, Arjuna, it is inside you….fight the attachment inside you…..control the mind so you can see.”
And we feel fortunate that this production of Mahabharata gives us a dramatized visual expression to truths of the struggle of our existence, right on this Festival stage. These are truths we cannot conquer, nor even understand, but in our personal struggles, these are truths that we, who watch and listen, can hear and now share with those around us who also watch and listen.
We are not alone, but together we realize that we are fated to be human.
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Note: When Ali Akbar Khan died in 2009, I wrote the following poem soon after. It appears now in my book Creativity and Creators in the Arts: Poems Celebrating the Muse 1984-2018. © James Strecker 2009
THE ALAP OF RAG SHRI
In memory of Ali Akbar Khan 1922-2009
Like the mystery of dreams
that lean near to listen what we do,
he gave us more than sound and
rhythm of all the mind’s elements
that might engender spirit.
He gave us longing memory of true
being that whispers like a shadow
as we walk in this world.
There is meaning enough in our grasp,
if we ourselves listen, and often, in the
timeless reverie of his music,
I knew what it means to live.
The sound was gentle and sturdy.
It found its way among the crags
of earth and sang as if to spirit
within us and said:
Be still like the river within your
heart and I will find you; I will pay
the ransom of time for the wounded
secrets you conceal.
It said: In passing from one life
to another, you shall be one
clarity of purpose.
It said: Let go the unnatural binding
of eternity that rules the heart,
from time to time, because it seems to
speak with no end and no beginning.
It said: Be stillness and be.