In the height of Melbourne’s 2020 lockdown, Jaya Berged wasn’t making sourdough or cutting her own hair but poring over Grimm’s Fairytales with collaborator Hem Tiwary.
Both alumni of Delhi’s Asmita Theatre Group who migrated independently, they swapped their ‘kala kurtas’ for the blacks of Melbourne, discovering their shared history and values through mutual theatre contacts.
Stuck inside with Tiwary as her one permitted visitor, they’d discuss how they could recapture the magic of live performance they were sorely missing. They landed on the Grimm Brothers’ short story Clever Elsie, drawn to the characters of Hans and Elsa.
“I think what really drew us [in is] how the characters are not your stereotypical hero and heroine. There’s not a great, strong, valiant man who saving a damsel in distress. There’s not beautiful princess who’s needing to be rescued,” Berged says.
“The story is literally this man is looking for a clever wife. This wife is anything but clever. But she satisfies his requirements for cleverness, and they get married, and there’s a comedy of errors that follows. It’s absurd in every way, but that’s what really gripped us, because the more absurd the story is, the more it creates room for our creativity.”
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Thus ‘The Axe in the Ceiling’ was born; a modern Indian theatrical adaptation of The Grimm Brothers’ Clever Elsie and Three Sillies, the show premiered at last year’s Melbourne Fringe and is back for another season at the Motley Bauhaus, this time bigger and better.
“The first time around we wanted to keep our ambitions modest based on the cast’s experience [level] and what we could put together in that time. But we had so much fun doing it, so I asked the cast if we’d like to do it again next year and everyone was like, yes!” Berged says.
“Now that we’ve already done it, we can go deeper and aim higher. We’ve basically introduced new elements and new characters, and we’ve gone deeper into things that we couldn’t properly explore last year.”
Hem Tiwary is looking forward to revisiting his role of Jay, a character he describes as ‘the voice of scandalous truth telling’.
“I think as an actor, it’s like gold for me when I get to play a character again. Jaya is so creative, there’s always something new there…when you get a different perspective [on the same things], it’s amazing,” he says.
Comprised of a young, diverse cast assembled through open rehearsals, much of the play was built through improvisation and devising techniques from Berged and Tiwary’s Asmita training.
The influence of Asmita’s socio-politically charged Hindi street plays has also rubbed off on the subject matter of ‘The Axe in the Ceiling’ which interrogates arranged marriage and relationships.
“This idea of picking and choosing a spouse based on prerequisites – that was something that really resonated with me because it’s so unheard of here in Melbourne, but growing up, that was all that was seen in my family,” Berged says.
“I think the main [message] in the play about relationships is how when there’s not space for people to be their full selves, they will step on each other’s toes…it’s basically intended to be a mirror, to reflect the universality of human interactions and relationships.”
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The peculiarity of relationships is analogous with the many absurd images littered through the play, including the titular axe wedged in the ceiling, and a woman who forgets who she is after her husband throws a net on her.
“She says, ‘oh, I don’t normally have a net on me, if I have the net on me, I must be someone else.’ She has an identity crisis because there’s a net on her that she didn’t put on herself – it just really spoke to me because our identities are often put on us by people around us,” Berged considers.
“If you just take a step back, you realise everything is absurd. The difference between what’s absurd and what’s realistic or naturalistic is a much thinner line than we imagine it is.”
Berged is excited to see what audiences make of this latest version of ‘The Axe in the Ceiling’.
“The play presents all the characters as very morally neutral… People will find they connected with this one [character] and the person they came with will say the exact opposite thing. It’s been beautiful to see how it’s speaking to people in a very personal way,” she says.
Tiwary is thrilled to be back in front of an audience and responding to their feedback.
“When we had our first show last year, I could see that connection between me and the audience, and that helped me evolve the character so much. I’m just waiting for that moment again, if I can find that whole audience response… I’m just looking forward to that,” he says.
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