The Kerala Shakespeare –
Chellanam vs Andrewa 1872-1968
by Prof. Dr George V Andrews, his son, on the occassion of the unveiling of the portrait of V S Andrews in the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy hall, Trissur, in June 1999.
Kerala Sahitya Academy during its forty-fourth annual day celebrations during the last week of March, two thousand, continued its salient feature of giving awards of recognition to deserving personalities in fine arts. In commemoration of the departed ones, nine portraits were unveiled in the Academy hall by eminent contemporary artists. The one that Dr A K Nambiar, the director of the School of Drama, Trichur, unveiled was of the pioneer Malayalam poet-playwright Chellanam V S Andrews (1872-1968). It sprang a surprise and made those who knew him happy and contended. This long overdue recognition by our cultural centre has come to him hundred and ten years after the publication and staging of his first play in 1891 and nearly thirty-two years after his death. Though he was marginalized by most literary historians, critics and research scholars in Malayalam drama, the spark from the dying embers continued to ignite his eldest son Cherian Andrews (1917) (Kerala Madavyan), whose life long study of and dedication to Malayalam literature resulted in shedding light on the dark avenues of the history of Malayalam Drama. Dr A K Nambiar the archangel sounded the clarion call and alerted the distinguished committee members of Kerala Sahitya Academy headed by the great literary luminary Mr. M T Vasudevan Nair. Chellanam V S Andrews comes to life. It is time to preach his gospel and sing Venithe Adoremus– come let us adore him.
But who could have thought that this pioneer Malayalam playwright would have come from an insignificant and unheard of Chellanam village of all places, in the former cochin state? Can any good come from Nazareth? Yet this was what had happened.
Though without much formal education or a university degree, he had acquired proficiency in Sanskrit, Tamil and Malayalam. Though not one among the university wits he had outdone the works of many university wits and added new dimensions to Malayalam drama. His career as a playwright often reminds me of William Shakespeare and it is no exaggeration that he had been referred to as Kerala Shakespeare in one of the leading newspapers of the time. He commenced his career as a playwright by writing and directing Tamil dramas, for there was no Malayalam drama or tradition during the close of the nineteenth century and his plays were originally not meant for printing and publication. He wrote them for dramatic companies according to the need of the time with an eye to the actors who were to play the different roles and with an awareness of the audience for whom he wrote. Therefore, reading and appreciation were not the main aim but the stage, action, audience participation, entertainment and enlightenment of the society. He strongly believed in the didactic purpose of art. Thus, his plays had the stage-worthiness which plays written by most others lacked. In British drama this difference can be found in the plays of Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw.
Our playwright did not only write plays but also composed songs, directed his plays, some times became a playback (probably the first playback) acted any role in the absence of actors, be it male, female, clown for he was a gifted actor and had all the qualities necessary for the creation of an accomplished actor – a fine presence, a quick wit, a good physique, a retentive memory, an alert brain, and a clear and resonant voice with good articulation. He was a singer, a dancer, a mime. In other words, it is correct to say that his was the ideal of a good balance of intuition and hard work tempered by all round experience. He was a born actor who perfected his acting by constant observation and imitation.
Some of the dramatic companies were short lived while others enjoyed long life. The group of actors in different companies often broke up, merged, separated, reformed and went out touring the different regions of Cochin, Travancore and even outside Kerala. In those days of mass illiteracy in general and villages in particular our playwright had to teach them literacy first and then give dramatic training. He was the playwright, tutor, master and guide. Many of his disciples bear witness to this Herculean task and his prayer to get really educated members in his companies. His prayer was granted and his work made easy and enjoyable when he wrote and directed his plays in colleges and in companies like The Royal Cinema and Dramatic Company and Sanmarga Vilasam later in his career.
This playwright began his career at a time when drama was considered the most corrupting and depraving branch of literature especially by the Christian authorities. Participation by women actors was impossible even to dream of and there was no hope of luring in actors from well to do upper- or middle-class families. The position of an actor was for long precarious even in Europe during the early history of drama and professional acting. In Catholic countries he was refused sacraments. In England legally even Shakespeare and his great contemporaries were liable to be classed as rogues and vagabonds and theatres were banned from London city limits and the situation changed only by the end of the nineteenth century. So, if the church authorities in Kerala looked down upon actors and writers of dramas it is not shocking. It was with great difficulty and perseverance that this playwright reversed the situation by the first quarter of the twentieth century. Gradually a time came when he was urged to write plays for the priests and nuns and seminarians and dramas for females alone to be staged in convents and men only in seminaries. Such a transformation was the result of our playwright’s management of the drama companies, where, Prosper-like he insisted on high standards in moral, religious and social conducts and maintained a strict discipline of stage and off stage. He believed in the necessity of discipline for success in any walk of life and fine arts was no exception. This so impressed the society that men and women of aristocratic and Christian communities took to the professional theatre.
The fact that his plays were staged at the palace of Cochin Rajas in the presence of the members of the royal family is an indication of the elevation of Malayalam drama as a dignified form of art. His dramatic career which began with Isthaki Charitham a social satire, moved on to Hindu religious themes in Ramaranya Yathra and Padukapattabhishekam and to Christian in Paradise Lost, Jnanasundari, Mishihacharithram and some miracle plays dealing with the life of saints and prophets. His Akbar the Great is an attempt at religious and cultural synthesis and the nature of the permanence of human love as seen in the Mughal court. He then entered the political phase of the freedom movement and evils of dictatorship in his Viplavalokam and rounded off with Pramadam a tragedy resulting from hamartia (fatal human error) as a warning to post war society. There are many dramas which he wrote in between these and in all he produced more than forty plays, some are published and some others not published. Some are available while others are not and attempts made to regain some have met with partial success. His wife Prestina, the only person who knew by heart almost all his plays and taught some of them orally to her children is in the silence of her grave since 1958.
When Malayala Manorama planned a drama company of its own in the nineteen thirties’, the committee consisting of Mr. O M Cherian, Mr. Kocheeppan Tharakan and Mr. Kottarathil Sankunny, this playwright was invited to write plays for the company. They had already accepted his drama Akbar the Great and decided to make him the director of the drama and manager of the company. At this point we should also remember with gratitude that it was the prophet like founder of Manorama, Kandathil Varghese Mappila who advised our playwright after witnessing his early Tamil drama in Ernakulam to write dramas in Malayalam instead of Tamil and the result was the first drama in this language in 1891. That was a turning point in the playwright’s career and in the history of Malayalam drama for he had never turned back until he was extolled as the Kerala Shakespeare by the media in the nineteen fifties when he had produced more than forty Malayalam dramas of various types and presented them before the audience. Malayalam drama had been liberated from the Sanskrit and Tamil conventions just as Shakespeare broke loose of Greek and Latin dramatic conventions and presented typical English dramas.
Our playwright was no ‘university wit’ nor was Shakespeare who escaped from Stratford and finally reached London after his grammar school education. He could see Greek and Latin well and of English he was a master whereas our playwright was good in Tamil and Sanskrit and proficient in Malayalam and was a teacher of the language. He too left his native village and drifted towards Cochin the then centre of socio cultural and political activity (British Cochin) just as Shakespeare found himself in Elizabethan London where men of talent in all walks of life flowed after the Armada years. There are plenty of opportunities for gifted young men to be easily drawn into the middle of the social elite. Having come into contact with such a society our author was easily drawn to the cultural activities of the royal family of Cochin and availed of the abundant opportunities of winning acclaim by staging his dramas. Among the companies for which he wrote and directed The Royal Cinema and Dramatic Company and Sanmarga Vilasam Company of the artist P J Cherian of the Royal Studio Ernakulam was like Chamberlain’s Men and Burbages to Shakespeare because he wrote most of his great plays for the members of the Puthenangadi family of Mr. P J Cherian. East end and West end of Cochin harbour and the banks of Vembanadu lake were like the theatre districts outside the gate of London city and on the banks of the river Thames.
After the Renaissance when the English drama went to school and when the ‘university wits’ began writing plays based on rules laid down by the classical masters, Shakespeare discarding that tradition wrote dramas of the English romantic tradition. Similarly, our playwright laid the foundation for a new dramatic tradition by omitting the prologue, epilogue, the three dramatic unities and such other classical conventions. During the Elizabethan Age all the different dramatic companies finally crystallised into two – that of chamberlain’s Men and Admiral’s Men- with their respective financiers James Burbage and Henslowe. Shakespeare was the principal playwright who held the fort for the chamberlain’s Men. Ben Jonson also contributed. But all the university wits – (Marlowe, Kyd, Peele, Greene, Lodge and Nash) – combined themselves to fortify Henslowe’s Admiral’s Men. The success of Shakespeare’s plays completely ruined their aspirations and the jealous and angry vituperations of the starving Robert Greene who condemned Shakespeare as “an upstart crow beatified with our feathers, that, with his tyger’s heart, wrapt in a player’s hide” . . . has become a landmark in the history of Shakespearean criticism.
When Malayala Manorama planned a drama company of its own in the nineteen thirties’, the committee consisting of Mr. O M Cherian, Mr. Kocheeppan Tharakan and Mr. Kottarathil Sankunny, this playwright was invited to write plays for the company. They had already accepted his drama Akbar the Great and decided to make him the director of the drama and manager of the company. At this point we should also remember with gratitude that it was the prophet like founder of Manorama, Kandathil Varghese Mappila who advised our playwright after witnessing his early Tamil drama in Ernakulam to write dramas in Malayalam instead of Tamil and the result was the first drama in this language in 1891. That was a turning point in the playwright’s career and in the history of Malayalam drama for he had never turned back until he was extolled as the Kerala Shakespeare by the media in the nineteen fifties when he had produced more than forty Malayalam dramas of various types and presented them before the audience. Malayalam drama had been liberated from the Sanskrit and Tamil conventions just as Shakespeare broke loose of Greek and Latin dramatic conventions and presented typical English dramas.
On witnessing the play, the authorities didn’t find anything derogatory to the rulers of the state on the other hand there were much that inspired patriotism. The title had to be changed to Modern World. Incidentally this play might have been the first drama in which the life of Mahatma Gandhi in particular and others like Nehru, Bose, Hitler, Mussolini and General Franco were presented on the stage in a theatre. His Gandhi was an unforgettable experience just as his Jesus Christ in Life of Christ which was staged by a number of dramatic companies for more than fifty years. The number of drama companies for which he wrote, produced, directed and managed might be as many as the number of plays he wrote between 1890 and 1950. It is a record which no other playwright can lay claim to.
The playwright used to return home after the successful staging of each play in a company only to go back, at the invitation of another, either on foot covering long distances or in country crafts or motor boats that plied along the different waters of Kerala or in buses, when it became available.
Our house was also a rehearsal centre for most of his plays. His home coming was a celebration not only for the members of the family and relatives but also for the entire village. Admirers and disciples, literary and theatrical aspirants from various parts come for advice, literary compositions, petitions to be drafted and presented and deputations to be led to various authorities for the solution of many problems. Being an editor of some early Malayalam newspapers like Samathwawadi, Bahurasam and Sarasasevini he had to collect and correct items to be printed. And he had many stories to tell and experiences to be shared. Throughout the day and late into the night his voice could be heard and I wonder whether there is anyone who has talked so much in life and slept so little as this playwright. He used to wake up at night suddenly at the call of the Muse and walk restlessly till he had put down in black and white the thoughts and actions of the characters he was creating. ‘The Poets’ eye in a frenzy rolling” and the direction of the ambling to and fro of this Pegasus in the darkness was indicated only by the light emitting from the beedi he was smoking. I often mistook him for a glow-worm or a will-O-the-wisp?
Thus travelling, writing, directing, teaching, acting, singing, prompting, criticizing and if need dancing, he played his different parts at different ages on the stage of this world. Shakespeare’s collaborator Ben Jonson’s commemoratory verse:
Soul of the age!
The applause delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakespeare, rise”
Rings clearly in my ears. But the Kerala Shakespeare ‘went out of sight, to see God only’, and chose an everlasting night in 1968. He awaits in his grave at the cemetery of Silver Hills Church in Calicut, the trumpet sound of angels ‘round earth’s imagined corners’ to rise from the dead “Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb.”