I do not know whether Lal has written more plays and have engaged in more creative activities, but Sapanako Sabiti reflects Lal’s immense potentiality as an emerging creative mind of contemporary Nepal. I have unexciting observations about his political essays in the newspapers because I cannot analyze political discourses, but the play certainly proves that philosophy does not clip an angel’s wings: Contextually, critical writing does not erode creative sensibilities.
I was very impressed by the entire modality of placing the individual as a narrative. The individual herself is the narrative, Sapana is the story. As she goes through various experiences, the contemporary story of the nation unfolds. Apart from using the technique of coalescing the self and the national narrative, the play illustrates a pervasive cultural sensibility, especially regarding identity. Sapana is unidentifiable as a person with specific class and community. The playwright’s characterization of Sapana reminds me of a very powerful critique of identity by the renowned Palestinian writer Edward Said. He once said in an interview, “Identity bores me. I am simply not interested in defending ‘identity’”. Sapana resists that rigidity by constantly becoming multiple persons.
I returned home with immense aesthetic satisfaction after watching the play. My praise for Lal’s play is not praise per se. I have read and observed many Nepali writers and artists who hurriedly want to identify themselves as postmodernists and shun any other academic leveling. They even get extremely upset if you do not interpret their works with postmodernist features.
I have unexciting observations about C K Lal’s political essays in the newspapers because I cannot analyze political discourses, but the play certainly proves that philosophy does not clip an angel’s wings: Contextually, critical writing does not erode creative sensibilities.
Furthermore, many of the writers nowadays announce universal claims in their writings: Incomprehensibly decontextualized subject matters, overambitiously verbose and mediocre use of language, and a kind of false artistic arrogance of Faustian omnipotence to know all and reach out to the brahmanda (cosmos). Lal’s play is simple and hence effortlessly moves the audience. One should learn the simple ways of writing a beautiful play or a poem with available materials of the world – Lal has done with ease and comfort – and produce a work of art.
I was not sure about the beginning of the play and was a bit impatient when the narrator continued speaking for a considerable amount of time, and I thought very intolerantly that the points of view of the narrator and Sapana are perhaps too long. The drama soon proved me wrong. Within the space and time of the story of the play, I corrected my viewing prejudices. The initial narrations merged with the world of the play.
The male narrator (Sanjeev Upreti) opens up an academic dimension to the play. He is not merely the playwright-self, but a dramatic persona to communicate every episode of the play to the audience with artistic ease. To me the male narrator anticipated every mood of the audience and narrated accordingly. Such characters heighten the dramatic sensibilities and Sanjeev was as good as the playwright’s imagination and Nisha’s enactment were.
Nisha is always exceptional and perhaps is among the finest of Nepali actors in the history of Nepali stage. Nepali theatre audiences have seen her performances in Agniko Katha and Doll’s House, and many more. I hope to see her performing in an epical scale in some classical play from Sanskrit literary tradition or in a Shakespearean tragedy like Macbeth. The renowned performance director Sunil Pokharel will certainly take interest in some intensely tragic genres. Ask her to be Draupadi, Lady Macbeth, Anna Karenina, or Rebecca!
The strongest part of the play is the woman. She is very powerfully portrayed in the play. You would wonder how the woman is so sensitive, so vehement in her womanly being, and so much capable of suffering. If one is sensitive and passionate about oneself, one is possibly in the precipice to fall. Sapana does not and that is why she is a powerful character; she evolves out of such contradictions of being a sensitive individual and capable of suffering, and ultimately is able to make her way into the complicated world. Jocasta in Sophocles’ Oedipus commits suicide when she comes to know about her sin, Oedipus does not, he suffers and makes knowledge simple. I do not compare Lal’s with these characters; I simply appreciate his effort of portrayal.
The individual is the story of a culture: The personal is historical. There are multiple such people who share Sapana’s fate. Newspaper accounts and documentaries are able to report such people, but it needs the idea of a creative artist to illustrate the lives of such people.
orungupto@gmail.com
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