Shukla Chatterjee
Matrikiran High School, Gurgaon. ORCID: 0000-0003-3181-2725. Email: shuklachat@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.28
Abstract
‘Travel narratives’ are primarily narratives or accounts of travel by the traveller or the narrator. With time this genre has journeyed from being just accounts to fictional stories as well. Though the nature of travel writing has taken up several forms, to proliferate the idea of travel through performance texts/plays is a rare to find. This is also because staging literal journeys on stage is a bit tricky. An Indian regional playwright of international acclaim, Vijay Tendulkar, explored this through his experimental play, Safar in Marathi which has been translated into English as The Cyclist. Beautifully crafted through the staging of various encounters by the protagonist, this play takes the form of a travel account. At the same time, by using ‘the cycle’ as a symbol, the playwright attempts to treat ‘journey’ as a metaphor and trace three types of journey – geographical, psychological and allegorical — which is quite obviously undertaken by every-man in life. This paper therefore attempts a detailed analysis of the play to show how performative language can also be used to create audio visual spectacle reifying the tale of the traveller/narrator on the stage.
Key words: travel narrative, travel play, Vijay Tendulkar, The Cyclist