PC Ramakrishna brings his play ‘Kamalakshi’ to Bengaluru

PC Ramakrishna’s play Kamalakshi, to be staged this in Bengaluru, is a fiction based on the 19th Century devadasi system

Step back in time to 19th Century India with the English play, Kamalakshi, written by Sujatha Vijayaraghavan and presented by The Madras Players, the oldest English theatre group in India (founded in 1955). Designed and directed by veteran theatre personality PC Ramakrishna, the play is a poignant tale of a temple dancer that entwines drama, classical music and Bharatantyam.

Working with live music is not new, Ramakrishna says over a call from Chennai in his baritone. “I had already done a play with music in 2019 called Trinity, which was about the three music composers — Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Syama Sastri.”

Trinity, which travelled to the U.S. after its premier, was in English, Ramakrishna says, and was based on three short stories by Sita Ravi, the granddaughter of writer, journalist, poet, critic and freedom fighter, Kalki Krishnamurthy.

Ramakrishna, who is also a mridangam artiste, trained under Palghat Mani Iyer, which he states made him keen to work with live music in his plays. “I performed as a mridangam artiste till I chose a corporate career and theatre. Trinity worked and brought in new audiences to the play, including those who usually went to the kutcheri rather than plays.”

Kamalakshi, Ramakrishna says, began a year-and-a-half ago. “I was at a lecture demonstration about Tamil music composers. One of the lectures was about Muthu Thandavar, whose famous work, ‘Terivilvaranu’ has been danced to. You will find this song on YouTube, sung in Sikkil’s (Gurucharan) soulful voice and danced to by Arushi Mudgal.”

Fascinated by the presentation, Ramakrishna says he told Sujata Vijayaraghavan, who was sitting next to him at the lecture, to write a play about a dancer. “She wrote Kamalakshi. She is a musicologist, scholar and a singer, while her daughter is a classical dancer hence, the play has music and dance.”

A popular voiceover artist, Ramakrishna has worked with All India Radio and Doordarshan (as an English news reader). He has been associated with The Madras Players since 1965 and has acted and directed plays for them. Some of his works include Water, Chudamani and Lakshmikanthan, the latter play is based on a famous murder and trial in 1945 involving the death of journalist Lakshmikanthan.