For someone like me, who was brought up within the strict Catholic codes of sin and virtue, the premise of Niyamavarthanam, a play by the Kochi-based Rasa Theatre Collective, was intriguing. Premised on the exchanges in a Catholic Christian family in Kerala, the performance — which attempts to raise questions about faith, morality, and sin — began by ushering viewers into a dimly lit room with faint choral music playing in the background and the actors already on stage. I expected the plot to discuss how a religion founded on moral guilt casts its shadow over the everyday lives of the characters, and sat down with a fair amount of scepticism, almost expecting the narrative to morph into vindication midway through the performance. But Niyamavarthanam was different from my expectations and better off for it.
The play, which had four performances over the weekend of April 22 and 23 at One Little Earth in Kochi’s Tripunithura, revolves around a landed family led by the ageing, blind patriarch Appachan, and his constant assertion of “ente vishwasam” (my faith). Ask him how he found his way to his seat in the dark, or how he “knows” that his eye drops will bring back his vision, and he responds that he could tell by touch, or that he had heard it from his doctor. Ask him again, and he will tell you that his knowledge comes from his faith.
Besides Appachan, there’s his elder daughter Lissy, her husband Antony, and their daughter Angel, as well as Appachan’s younger daughter Nancy who visits the family over the course of the play. Lissy’s second pregnancy and her decision to terminate it are what drive Niyamavarthanam. Antony, her husband, tries to broker peace between Appachan who dishes out ‘pro-life wisdom’, and Lissy, who asserts her choice. But even as she puts her foot down, she is plagued by guilt and a sense of sin. Contrasted with Lissy’s apprehensions is the conviction of Nancy, a divorcee who is cast out by her father and the Church for her choice to end her marital ties.
Though Niyamavarthanam speaks about the Catholic woman’s agency by pegging it against morally contested issues such as abortion and divorce, the characters speak only about ‘the issue’, never once articulating them in clear words. While not pronouncing the words ‘abortion’ and ‘divorce’ to build suspense is understandable in the initial minutes of the play, one is left wondering why those words were treated as entirely unspeakable throughout.
The parish priest who is called to talk Lissy out of her choice is an intriguing character with surprising opinions. While there is no cause for astonishment in Appachan delegating the final decision to the Church – it is common to consult priests for everything from college admissions to real estate deals – what was surprising is the young priest’s take on the subject. While he begins by calling ‘it’ a violation of the Biblical ten commandments, he goes on to say that it is not right to interfere in the personal choices of individuals and that laws are meant to be changed to suit the times, inviting an angry retort from Appachan, “Father, are you a Communist?”
A Catholic priest who says it is not right to interfere in an individual’s personal decisions, or that laws are meant to change with the times, however young he may be, was unlike any of the priests that I have met in my personal experience. It had me wondering why the play chose to absolve the priest and thereby the Church of any direct involvement in the misery of Lissy. From then on, Niyamavarthanam progresses to critique patriarchy in general, while also not particularly commenting on the rot in the Catholic Church.
In the scene after ‘it’, Lissy enters with a bowl of water and a towel, obsessively wiping her hands, face, feet, and belly. For a moment, you doubt that she will be driven to madness, knowing how Catholicism guilts people into submission. You almost hear her, like Lady Macbeth, bemoan, “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
In the background of the scene is Appachan atop a stool, assuming moral high ground and unleashing his litany of “Aren’t you ashamed!” at Lissy. But as the scene, choreographed exceptionally, comes to an end, Appachan’s voice and posture come down from a loud assertion to a mumbling bow down. When the play ends, Appachan turns his back to the audience, still in the dark, while the others – Lissy, Nancy, Angel, and Antony – face forward, lit candles in hand.
The play, as the playwright and director Rahul Thomas put it, questions religious dogmatism without dismissing people’s faith. Rahul and Sidharth Varma, who co-founded Rasa, aim to mould a space for theatre in Kerala with plays that are in tune with the times. The duo, who were both engaged in theatre at Bengaluru and Chennai, moved to Kochi during the pandemic. To Sidharth, the play was also a personal journey where he tried to understand himself, and the men around him. “That is the transformative element of theatre,” he said. “People are often obsessed with the theatrics, but the play is beyond the performance, it is more about what we are trying to say,” Rahul and Sidharth believe.
The duo says that Niyamavarthanam evolved from a dramatised reading of Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1903 play Intruder. The latter’s influences on the former, such as the blind grandfather, and the critique of dogmatism, are unmistakable. To my questions about not naming ‘it’, Rahul said that they hoped to critique the issue through narrative devices rather than just bluntly stating the words. He also said that the crew has met young priests like the one in the play, who says that the Church needs to change with the times.
Rahul as Appachan, whose loud orders and bitter curses are all too familiar, was striking. His wide, unblinking eyes that seem to both stare you down and search for something in the distance at the same time, accommodate Appachan’s stubbornness with believability. A scene where Appachan gives Antony a slice of orange as the two sit down for a conversation had me playfully wondering how the actor will speak his lines with the orange seed in his mouth. But before I could finish my thought came Appachan’s order, cupping his palm below Antony’s mouth, “There, spit out that orange seed.”
Sidharth plays Antony, Sharanya is Lissy, Pooja is Nancy, Anjali is Angel, and Ramesh is the priest. All of them gave extraordinary performances. The light design by Sidharth and execution by Charles Joseph perfectly captured the visual tone of the narrative. Nirupama Thomas’s costumes authentically reflected Catholic austerity.
Niyamavarthanam is the second production of Rasa, and they are gearing up for more performances including travelling with the play to other locations. Rasa’s first production, Gajam, was a digital play on human-animal conflict supported by a grant from the ThinkArts Grant 2021. It premiered at the ThinkArts International Festival for Young Audiences 2021, and was screened at the ZiguZajg Arts Festival for Children and Young People 2022. Rasa also conducts theatre workshops for different age groups, titled Aarambam, Ulsaham, and Kutty Koottam, in the incremental order of age.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the play. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.