STRINGS OF A GENIUS

WHEN PETER SHAFFER’S Amadeus premiered in 1979, it startled audiencesbyportray- ing Mozart not as a saintly prodigy but as a messy, fragile, all-too-hu- man genius. With Enchantment, playwright-director Gowri Ramnarayan attempts something similar for Pundit Ravi Shankar, to show us not just the sitar maestro but the man behind the myth.

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Gowri braids theatre, music, and dance into one tapestry, not in imi- tation of ancient theories like the Natya Shastra, but from instinct and training. “In Enchantment, I used music and dance not as pas- tiche, but as organic fusion. Since my protagonist is a dancer-turned- musician, it seemed natural that this story should be told in a theatre of confluence.”

The production, staged by JustUs Repertory, combines recorded tracks of Ravi Shankar himself with live dance and performance. Vocals by Bombay Jayashri, along- side Aditya Prakash, Vignesh Ishwar, and Chaitra Sairam, merge with tabla, flute, and violin.

Gowri says she chose “composi- tions where I heard the moans of yearning, trills of wonder, and the silence of meditation. They resonate with the arc of the story and evoke the protagonist's chang- ing moods.”