Over at the second hall, the Rimal Natak Ghar, a rehearsal is still going on. Dressed in their bulky winter attires, the actors seem almost nonchalant as they practice their lines and choreography, occasionally sharing moments of laughter and getting into tiffs about their cues and parts in the drama.[break]
They are preparing for “Agniko Katha” (Fire in the Monastery). Penned by Abhi Subedi and directed by Sunil Pokharel, the founder and Kul Guru of Gurukul, this was their first play that they opened with back in 2003.
This will also be the last play to be staged at their current location – up that hillock in Purano Baneshwor with its winding dirt road.
“A rehearsal for tomorrow’s drama is going on,” begins the narrator of the play. Set in a monastery, the opening scene shows a group of monks and nuns rehearsing for their play to be staged next day.
Watching a rehearsal within a rehearsal: the parallel of the circumstances in the play and in real life are bewildering, almost cathartic.
The plot progresses: one of the characters, a monk, runs in wailing that a fire has destroyed their monastery; all their Holy Scriptures and books of knowledge burnt to ashes. Chaos follows - “What will happen now?” “Will the play still happen tomorrow?” “What next?” Everything is uncertain.
Outside in the foyers of the theatre, a composed Pokharel shares, “The dismantling begins this Sunday. We’ll have a month’s time to collect all our stuff and move out of this place.”
The iron pillars and props pulled down from the Sama Theatre lie around in the Gurukul compound in heaps. There’ll be more added on to the pile once they start bringing down the Rimal Theatre.
“We’ll probably have thirty trucks of load to carry once we shift. But we haven’t even found a suitable storeroom for our equipments yet,” Pokharel says. Let alone a space to start rebuilding Gurukul.
On the day that Sama Theatre was being bulldozed, Nisha Pokharel says she stayed in her room, pouring her frustration in her facebook status. “I couldn’t watch what we built with our own hands being destroyed like that. I desperately needed a release.”
She shares, how after their marriage, she had been persistent about going to the US. But her husband had asked for two years and her faith in him to live out his dream of reviving theatre in Nepal.
With the establishment of Gurukul, his dreams became entwined with the dreams of his students who would go on to become the real pillars that upheld the theatre.
Together, not only did they revive the theatre culture in Nepal, they could also shift the trend of old scholarly theatre goers to more youths. With quite a great number of remarkable performances, they’ve given the Nepali audience a taste of theatre so good, they refuse to let go of it.
“This place can’t shut down,” says Bijaya Karki, a BA student and a regular at Gurukul since her class eight days, her voice a lament. “The excitement of climbing up that road, watching a play and leaving with a feeling of gratification has been such a joy for me. If this place closes down, it’ll leave a huge void in my life.”
Her friend Pratiksha Kattel adds that for literature students like themselves, Gurukul and its plays were valuable reference points, a place of knowledge. As the two fervently speak of their favorite plays and their experiences of Gurukul, their first-timer friends squirmed, “We’ve missed out on so much.”
“They surely must be thinking of rebuilding Gurukul somewhere else in Kathmandu. They have to,” adds a hopeful Karki.
And yes, the Gurukul team has been constantly thinking about a place to shift for a long time now. The land they’d build the theatre upon was a private property they’d taken on lease. Without a space of their own, they knew they could be asked to move any day.
“But things were going fine. We were able to extend our lease for as many years and yes, I was careless about planning for an emergency,” admits Pokharel, responding in his characteristic precise statements.
They’d also repeatedly requested the government to provide them with a space that they could lease for a longer period. “We requested this government and the ones before this. None of them said no but they also never did anything.”
Though their partnership with the Norwegian Embassy has ended, Pokharel is still positive that they have good financial support and that they can collect enough money through fundraisers to at least start building the infrastructures.
He estimates it would cost some Rs 120 million and he’s hopeful that they can get to that amount. “If we find a suitable space, Gurukul can start afresh within six to seven months.”
The uncertainty of the circumstance will also hit the thirty and more staff at Gurukul, possibly to a greater extent.
“Theatre is all we know,” is a frequent claim that these actors make. At the moment, though most of them are still undecided as to what they’ll do after Gurukul, they add that they’ll get by somehow.
Handling the sound during one of the rehearsals, Kamal Mani Nepal, one of the talented theatre artists of Gurukul, had shared a few days back, “I’m thinking of freelancing. I might also conduct workshops, teach drama at schools but I don’t know how feasible it will be.”
Nepal, who is one of the students from the first batch to receive training from Gurukul, has stayed with the institution all throughout.
“Some friends were also talking about working in an organic farm. If all else fails, I’ll go back to my village and help my father. But me, my wife and my son have gotten used to the Kathmandu life. It will be a bit hard.”
Raj Kumar Pudasaini, another fantastic actor from the same batch, was a rebel who left his home for acting. He has done nothing but acting in his professional career and has been living at Gurukul itself.
In a month, he’ll have to find a place to stay. As strange creatures as these artists are, when asked how he feels about the looming uncertainty, Pudasaini replies with a smile as bright as the sun he was basking in outside the Sama Hall: “I’m feeling very relaxed. Honestly.”
This had to happen one day, Pudasaini says.
“With everything going fine before, people had become stagnant. This will be a time to explore ourselves. I’m excited to see what we’ll do next.”
Back at the rehearsals, all these actors are engrossed in their parts – as monks and nuns. All they are concerned about are getting their lines right; about getting their cues and choreography in order.
On stage are the familiar faces of the actors who, over the years, have morphed into many different roles. These individuals, who were once unknown, got their identities from Gurukul, and some talents even outgrew the theatre halls.
Saugat Malla, who now calmly practices his choreography at one end of the hall, with his astounding performances, has given goose bumps to audiences who have watched him in the intimate space of the theatre.
The actor has also gone on to make some indelible marks in Nepali films with some of his roles. No one can deny Sarita Giri shone through in her solo performance as Miss Margarida. Kamal Mani Nepal’s comic timings, Raj Kumar Pudasaini’s furiously passionate acting, Aruna Karki’s energetic deliverance, Nisha Pokharel’s tear-jerking performances – all of the actors on the stage have given unforgettable performances.
While some grabbed media attention and the silver screen limelight, some relatively new finds of Gurukul are yet to bloom fully.
Pashupati Rai, still recovering from her fever, rushes around the stage during rehearsals with her eager enthusiasm to learn, as always. Ramhari Dhakal goes over his script with his Sarita Didi. “I did okay, right?” he asks her and she nods, “Of course.”
Without Gurukul, will they find the same nurturing environment elsewhere?
As the rehearsal moves on to the second scene, the stage is left for two of the central characters of the play – Prabin Khatiwada as the monk, Gyan, and Nisha Pokharel as the nun, Purnima.
As you learn more of the play, the despair of the saints in having lost their sacred monastery to a merciless fire, their years of hard work and writings in the library, their hopes and fear strike the reality of Gurukul in so many ways.
When the playwright Professor Dr Subedi wrote Agniko Katha some ten years ago, it came out of his grief when the students had burnt the library of Tribhuwan University during a protest.
“Many things were being destroyed at the time; the country was in such unrest. Coincidentally, the Tyangboche monastery had also caught fire around the same time,” says Subedi, “When the drama came out, it was a representation of everything that was going around and inside me.”
Since its first enactment at Gurukul, the play has been staged and restaged around the world and people of different nationalities have related to the story. “It’s shocking even to me how a drama becomes a metaphor in itself.”
It’s probably characteristic of true art that it keeps taking on new meanings and stays just as relevant even with changing times. At the moment, the play has also taken on a new meaning for Gurukul.
The theatre was not just a holy learning ground for actors and devotees; it was also a joint for creative amalgamation. From national and international theatre festivals to poetry recitals, book launches, literary discussions, art exhibitions, creative workshops, musical performances and the inspired awes of the audiences and participants, all this and more is what Gurukul held.
Though most of these actors wear a calm façade about what’s being taken away from them, the emotional turmoil is apparent in their silence and blank stares that you catch them at sometimes.
It was apparent when the emotional pair of Subedi and Pokharel stood wiping tears below the statue of Gopal Prasad Rimal after the staging of Maya Deviko Sapana on Tuesday. These are frailties that artists try their best to hide in reality but fearlessly expose in their art forms.
But only a few feet away, below the statue of Govinda Bahadur Malla “Gothale,” Aruna Karki beamed with hope, “I’m thankful for that bulldozer. It brought us back to reality. As for the demolition, the old infrastructures have to collapse to give way to a new beginning.”
The play is the enactment of the same belief. Despite the fire that engulfed all that they held sacred and the disorder that follows in the monastery, the wise saints accept that nothing was lost which could not be recreated, and they start anew.
The reality of Gurkul also stands on the same belief. Despite the demolition, it has only taken this as an awakening, to move into a process of regeneration. And they’ve got everything they need – the talents, the willpower, the drive and the faith that they can get backup.
The only search is for a space – to start building upon the belief and once again transform their dreams into reality.
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