Garbo is about Young People 'Writing Garbo was a mistake, I think. Staging its performances would've been a second mistake, which I wanted to avoid,' said Mahesh Elkunchwar in an interview, explaining why he chose not to give permission to produce the play which he scripted in the 70s. To his mind, it was a "risky proposition" (since it involved so-called indecency) which would fall flat in the hands of a lesser director or lesser actors. To his consternation it can be said that staging Garbo

more »

... st have been the best, since many films are being produced with such indecency. Garbo is about the class of young people living aimlessly with the shattered dreams, the diffusion of mediocrity, and the burden of inhibitions. It is a play about the generation which breaks out into defiance of living out their own lives with non-conformism for a credo; throwing up in the process of small minority culture, containing within itself its own seeds of destruction. Garbo is a woman in her late twenties who confronts her destiny but finally lands into trouble of sorts. As an inspiring actress she ends up doing B-grade films, as she couldn't get good opportunities. Significance of the Name Garbo Elkunchwar, probably would have named the character of the woman after the great Hollywood actress Greta Garbo. She is regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars in the Hollywood. There was some speculation that Greta Garbo was bisexual, that she had an intimate relationship with men as well as women. Soon after her career took off, she became known as recluse throughout her life. She lived the last years of her life in absolute seclusion. Intuc Intuc is a cynical intellectual and a college professor. Pansy is a young man who shows gay tendencies in the play, and Shreemanth, a rich man, whose apartment is Intuc's and Pansy's residence. The three men try to fill void between and inside them with seemingly meaningful Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:7 July 2014 Dr. A. S. Kanna Garbo -Four Outsiders by Mahesh Elkunchwar 375 conversation, music and sexually charged-discussion about Garbo, the struggling actress and the woman in their lives. Evam Indrajith and Garbo When Mahesh Elkunchwar wrote Garbo in the early nineteen seventies, Badal Sircar's Evam Indrajith was already making rounds in the country's theatrical circles, with productions in English and several other languages. Evam Indrajith and Garbo were both about the class that Mahesh Elkunchwar describes in retrospect as 'we young people'. Cities Kolkatta and Mumbai carried different histories, and hence different cultures, but the young people in both places felt the same frustrations of shattered political dreams, the diffusion of mediocrity and the burden of inhibitions, as the post-independence euphoria dissipated into thin air. If Sircar, from an early generation, could only lament the collapse of youth aspirations, with a precarious reaching out to an Indrajith, who is different from Amal , Kamal and Bhimal, lost in the mire of mediocrity, Mahesh Elkunchwar's young people, a generation later, would rather break out into the defiance of living out their own lives with non-conformism for a credo; throwing up in the process, a small minority culture, containing with in itself its own seeds of self-destruction. In an interview at Nagpur, the playwright says, Suddenly the non-conformists among us had decided to shake off all this artificial baggage imposed on us by tradition. At the same time we had realized that we didn't know what to do with the freedom, and we almost abused it. Since we were not equipped to use this freedom creatively or constructively, we began to destroy our selves in the process. (xii) (Mahesh Elkunchwar, "Garbo") Cynical Posture and Trivial Conversations The play opens deceptively with a sense of cynical camaraderie on a Sunday morning. The set is bare and grey, except for a few bean bags, a carom board and low tables. Cigarette smoke and alcohol are, only making the progression of a long day.