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Parody and Comment: Comedy in Contemporary Marathi Theater
| Article
# : |
20335 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
3,698 Words |
| Author
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Mahadev L. Apte
Mahadev L. Apte is professor of cultural anthropology at Duke
University. He researched contemporary Marathi theater during
fieldwork in India from August 1989 until May 1990. |
On the evening of January 15, 1990, I was in the audience for the comedy Kuryat SadaTingalam (Let us forever tease). The popular Marathi-language show had been performed eight hundred times in the previous four years. The show was held at the Tilak theater, located on one of the city's main throughfares, in Pune, western India. The theater was two-thirds full, and the curtain went up at 9:45 P.M. The play caught on right away, and the spectators frequently roared with laughter.
The comedy was an exaggerated representation of the life of middle-class Marathi speakers. It revolved around the theme of arranged versus love-inspired marriage; specifically, it depicted what families have to go through to get their children married. It also offered a commentary on the lives of young college-going men and women.
Verbal humor--exploiting linguistic devices such as punning, wordplay, rhyming, and caricatures of individual speech styles--was a dominant feature of the performance. All characters expressed themselves in a mixed speaking style, switching among three languages: Marathi, Hindi (the official language of India), and English. However, the English or Hindi they spoke was full of errors. There were several ludicrous-sounding telephone conversations resulting from confusion over the identity of the caller or receiver. Some characters were marked with idiosyncratic speech habits that occurred frequently, making for guaranteed humor-generating stimuli.
The central character of the play was a retired professor of Marathi; he was like a friend to his grandson and granddaughter, who were on the "marriage market." Another family, who had been living in England, returned to India to get their only daughter married and came to stay with the retired professor's family. As one might expect, the grandson and the girl from England developed a mutual attraction. The young man, shy and inexperienced in matters of courting, was helped by his clever and witty grandfather, who observed his grandchildren's fads and youthful activities with bemusement and love. Only after surmounting several problems, and much plotting on the grandfather's part, did the young couple arrange to marry.
The grandfather, known as Dada, conceived and executed various schemes--with the help of his granddaughter--to create opportunities for the young couple to get better acquainted. Dada also plotted with his future granddaughter-in-law to make her rather tightfisted father realize that he could not extricate himself from bearing the appropriate wedding expense
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