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Published: February 25, 2015 17:40 IST | Updated: February 25, 2015 17:40 IST  Thiruvananthapuram, February 25, 2015

The King and the playwrightSARASWATHY NAGARAJAN

THe HInduAcademic and playwright John Mathew at his home in Thiruvananthapuram. Photo: Saraswathy Nagarajan

The HInduAn old snapshot of John Mathew with his certificate from BBC for his play Grave Affairs

Academic and awardwinning playwright John Mathew is writing a play on Uthram Thirunal, a monarch of erstwhile Travancore

John Mathew (“spelt with a single ‘T’”) redefines the word versatility. John enjoys blurring the lines between his many interests. To preventbeing pigeonholed at work or play, the genial biologist and historian wears many hats with ease and sees no incongruity in doing so. “I dislikebeing straitjacketed and I feel that children being forced to specialise so early in life means they are being forced to betray their childhood,” hesays during a brief visit to his home, Vishranti, at Muttada.

By following his heart and taking up whatever catches his interest, John, an INK speaker, continues to play many roles – as academic,playwright, author, poet, music composer, scientist and researcher. “I have known many people who regret not following their childhoodpassion. But I have no such regrets. That means my effort may have been scattered but that is the way I like it,” says John, his words echoingthe accents of his travels and stays abroad.

As he walks you through his interests and thoughts, John’s childlike enthusiasm is evident but so is his painstaking research that has goneinto each of his works. Lately, John, who is teaching at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, is working on a play thathas made him an explorer of erstwhile Travancore. In Harvard, he happened to read George Woodcock’s Kerala: A Portrait of the MalabarCoast and was mesmerised. “Although I had heard stories about Marthanda Varma, Velu Thampi Dalawa and so on, I found there was somuch more to be discovered when I began reading it sequentially. I found that the city I was visiting frequently was taking on a different hue.

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And I wanted to know more. I began reading P. Sankunni Menon and eventually met Gouri Lakshmi Bayi and Swati Tirunal,” he explains.

The story of the only queen of Travancore who had ruled in her own right caught his attention. He was struck by the rapport between thequeen, a staunch Hindu, and John Munroe, a devout Christian. He was planning to write a novel or play on them when he came across the lifeof Uthram Thirunal (18141860), the brother of Swati Tirunal, who succeeded him to the throne of Travancore. “He seems to have had ascientific bent of mind and was quite happy to pursue his study of chemistry and medicine. Finally, I decided to write a play on him,” saysJohn.

He travelled to Colachel, Padmanabhapuram Palace and Udayagiri to get a feel of the scenes of many of the important milestones in thehistory of Travancore. “It was surreal to go to Colachel and find this column commemorating a victory over the Dutch in 1741. In UdayagiriFort we saw the grave of De Lannoy, who was actually Flemish.”

As is his wont, he also explored the cemetery of the CSI Church in the city where some of the protagonists of his play were laid to rest. “Thiswas history in the time of peace, a time when a society was on the cusp of great changes. It was not about the conflict of swords. So how wouldone show the conflict of ideas on stage…? It is a challenge. My ambition is to stage it in Thiruvananthapuram,” says John.

But work is in progress and John is at his writing table in his house, where much of his writing has taken place.

His oeuvre reflects a childhood spent in different countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Libya, United Kingdom…, an upbringing that exposed him tomany cultures and widened his horizons. His mother read poetry and plays to him and his sister initiated a long affair with words in Johnwho seems to be writing all the while – prose, poetry and plays.

From playing an angel in a play while in school in Libya, John moved centre stage during his student days in MCC, Chennai, when he wrote amusical Olive that was staged in the Music Academy Hall in Chennai. John, one of the founders of the Scrub Society, Madras ChristianCollege’s environmental organisation in 1990, was also secretary of the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network in Madras (“the first suchstudent initiative anywhere”) that organised a hatchery for Olive Ridley sea turtles.

“I wondered how we would be able to create awareness about the need to protect the Olive Ridley Turtles. With all due respect to creativework by great writers, I wondered why we could not write play and books with an Indian context when we are so rich in material. That waswhen I came up with the idea of a play based on the turtles. The entire musical was written in this house when I came for a vacation,” heremembers.

In 1995, 24yearold John came under the arc lights when his play Grave Affairs (also titled A Sunset in Purple) was selected as the best playin the category ‘English as a second language’, for a BBC radiodrama contest and was broadcast worldwide. It also premiered on the stage inHarvard in 2001. Grave Affairs, based in Kerala, was about a Hindu caretaker who looked after adjoining cemeteries (one Christian and oneMuslim) in northcentral Kerala.

“When I write, I weave in my different experiences chronologically and thematically together,” he says. Right now, John is busy exploring theheritage of the city that he calls home.

The academic and wordsmith

* John has a doctorate in Ecology from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, and in History of Science from Harvard.

* John has written five fulllength plays and four short plays. Recently, he won an eauthor prize for best novel (2008) in an allIndiacompetition for his manuscript Origins and Descents.

* B(e) Minor Blue, is a musical on being young, while the The Original Anglo Indian, another play, is an elegy to childhood.

* John is the cofounder of South Asian American Theatre (Saath), the first South Asian theatre company in Boston, and was its artisticdirector from 2002 to August 2007.

* All of John’s plays have a colour in the title.

Printable version | May 18, 2015 10:22:50 AM | http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/thekingandtheplaywright/article6933125.ece

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