It’s opening day of rehearsals, and the black-box rehearsal studio is dimly lit. The theater company is seated in a large circle; at the center is an altar adorned with flowers, burning incense, the flickering flame of a candle and a statuette of Ganesh (the Elephant god who in Hindi thought is the remover of obstacles). Placed on opposite sides are two bowls of water in which red carnations serenely float. Next to the vessels are neatly folded olive-colored towels. The ritual has begun.
From the circle, two individuals approach the altar in silence. They bring the towels and the vessels to the person seated next to them. Carefully, the participants wash and dry the feet of their partner. The space fills with quiet murmurs: “I honor your creativity, and I dedicate myself to you as my partner in this collaboration. Namasté.” As the ritual ends, the company sits in meditation while the sense of quietude wafts through their collective creative minds. Everyone seems to feel a keen connection with one another.
That was the first day of rehearsals for OM, An Indian Tale of Good and Evil at a newly built studio at UCSB. BOXTALES Theatre Company had just begun the largest production in its 15-year history.
Traditionally, the Santa Barbara-based professional theater company staged shows with a cast of seldom more than three performers. In 2005, BOXTALES decided to do an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. It maintained its style of storytelling, physical theater and a minimalistic mise-en-scène but increased its cast to five performers. The production gained exceptional reviews and awards. Inspired by myths, epics, folklore and the opportunities by enlisting a larger cast, this year BOXTALES took on an even greater artistic challenge of staging the great Hindu epic of the Rāmāyana.
After the company’s staging of The Odyssey, core members Jeff Mills, Michael Andrews and Matt Tavianini felt an urge to continue their collaboration with Jenny Sauer-Klein, who brought the technique of AcroYoga® to BOXTALES. AcroYoga combines partner yoga, acrobatics and Thai massage into a practice, and when performed can be visually exciting and technically effective. The technique provides yet another tool for the company in its already recognized style of physically based theater.
Sauer-Klein’s influence on the company through yoga triggered within the company an intensified interest in Indian mythology and performance practice. In the company’s search for the next project, its members began to study the epic account of Rama and Sita, and thus, OM was born.
BOXTALES brought new collaborators to the process: Allie Menzimer, a member of the cast and serves as scribe for the production, scored a Kennedy Center Award for playwriting recently; Timo Beckwith, a multitalented artist from San Luis Obispo, is production designer; Kira Jones is a costumer and aerial consultant; Jeff Boynton is a lighting designer; and Montecito’s Montino Bourbon is the music guru — not the usual title, but he is an acknowledged master of Indian music and created a score to match the epic story. He will play live every show with his recordings.
This summer, Andrews (cast as Ravana and King Dasaratha) and Mills (director) spent three weeks in India to learn and experience how to imbue the production with authenticity. Faced with such a weighty and lengthy epic, originally in a language few nonspecialists understand and filled with so many artistic and ethical challenges, why did BOXTALES choose to stage this epic? “In some ways, it chose us,” Mills said. “There was an initial and instinctual hook that continually keeps stirring our interest for this story. At the same time, through the rehearsal process we continue to discover why we are so dedicated to the telling of the Rāmāyana.”
The epic poem tells the story of Lord Rama (Tavianini plays the elder Rama, while Bryan West plays young Rama), the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu. Rama is about to take over his father’s crown but destiny has other plans. He is banned from his rightful kingdom for 14 years. Rama, his wife Sita (the reincarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi and played by Angela Chandra) and his brother Lakshmana (played by Jason Jackson) leave and enter the wilderness of the jungle.
During their pilgrimage, they meet many rishis and gain deep wisdom from them. At the same time, Rama and his brother have to protect the sages from the rakshasas, who are ravaging the otherwise blissful wilderness. Rama’s destiny is anchored to his mission to unroot the destruction of darkness and illusion. Rama is the idealized man, and he is a master of Dharma. At the core of this classic is the intense love-based relationship between Rama and Sita: the god and goddess incarnated and embodied.
Rama stands for the emblematic balance between god and man. As a sacred and mythic entity, part of his purpose is to inspire and nurture the human being in him or her striving toward such pristine levels of existence. West is honored and overwhelmed by the greatness of his heroic character, saying, “Rama is an ancient ideal of the perfect man.”
Inherent in this particular assignment for West, and perhaps any actor embodying Rama, is that he sees himself as flawed while being very conscious of a constant drive toward being a “good and virtuous man.” West has been inspired by a motto attributed to James Dean: “Being a good actor is hard, but being a good man is even harder.” That is what West said he hopes to achieve and what he believes Rama best serves as exemplar. At the same time, he also seeks to create a character that is an embodiment of god in man and one wherein the actual human part is vulnerable, flawed and alive. That is the part the audience directly identifies with, while the god part is what it perhaps strives toward.
Many of the crew and cast bear witness to the fact the rehearsal process has been a transformational and spiritual endeavor. West said that for him, the question regarding his own spiritual nature has slowly grown in importance throughout his life, from being unimportant, even nonexistent, to being at the forefront of his thinking. By engaging in spiritual practices every day in rehearsal, he has found a spiritual connection, a sense of presence and peace he hitherto had not experienced. If on stage he can accomplish just one thing, he said he would wish to tell the audience a “good story about how amazing it is for all of us to be both god and human.”
Tavianini also confesses to having experienced a profound spiritual transformation through this work. Similar to West, he feels his spiritual life has been dormant, but by being engaged in the Rāmāyana and going through the very specific motions of the rehearsal process, he has begun to ask questions: “Will I say yes or no to spirituality? Am I just going to talk about it, or am I actually going to practice and conduct a spiritually-based life?”
The ensemble speaks of moments in rehearsals that have inspired them in the ongoing work. One of those occurred on the day it was announced circus artist Roald Penning would become part of the cast. Penning, whose partner is Sauer-Klein (cast as King Hanuman), had been visiting from the Netherlands to spend the first two weeks of rehearsal teaching the cast AcroYoga. When his stay came to an end, Penning realized his work and commitments in the Netherlands awaited him. He had to let go of his own attachments and securities linked to his established life in Europe to become part of this experience.
“I love the spiritual foundation from which all this is growing forth,” Penning said. “This whole process we are going though as a cast is a transformation to become closely connected to our true selves. The Rāmāyana is about making choices based on an inner knowing and, when one hears one’s inner knowing, clearly one must take a leap of faith. This is what the story is about, and this is what it was for me making my own radical choice.”
By paralleling certain rituals and exercises to the story itself, the cast has been able to align themselves with several of the multilayered realities inherent in the text and its context. Part of the training projected toward the end result of the show is targeted from several directions: physical (yoga, acrobatics, Indian-based performance techniques), mental (research, inquiry, discussion) and spiritual (rituals, meditations). Indeed, the cast has received training in yoga, music, singing, chants, mudras, dance and martial arts.
Although they are merely gleaning the surface of these sacred arts, it gives the performers and, thus, the production a texture linking it to the epic’s source culture.
Om, An Indian Tale of Good and Evil is playing now through Sunday at the Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido St. in Santa Barbara. Tickets are $40 for general admission and $15 student/seniors; a special group price of $25 for 10 of more is available. Click here or call the Lobero at 805.963.0761.
— Ottiliana Rolandsson serves as Dramaturg for BOXTALES Theatre Company’s Om, An Indian Tale of Good and Evil.