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that the whole of India is here. Designer Chloe Obolensky says that Brook’s talent is in suggesting, intimatin, letting you see. That’s why our palace courtyard is not an archeological reconstruction and why we give the actors real clothes instead of period costumes - we want to leave them free. Brook’s adaptation makes this The Mahabharata, the quintessential Indian work accessible to Western audiences. Brook worked with his team of international actors and musicians, writer Jean-Claude Carrière (who collaborated for many years with Bunuel) and Chloe Obolensky, to create a nine-hour event of unparalleled theatrical magic, a consummation of Brook’s skills as a director. From 1985 to 1987 The Mahabharata was performed extensively throughout Europe, with highly successful seasons in France, Greece, Italy, Germany and Spain. In August 1987 the company embarked on an ambitious world tour which took them to Switzerland, the USA, Australia, Denmark, the UK, ending in July 1988 in Japan. The Mahabharata has reached

three continents, a dozen countries and some fifteen cities. Audiences numbered tens of thousands. It has with nothing but critical superlatives and popular acclaim. Then the process of adapting the nine-hour theatrical event for television began. Brook collaborated with Jean-Claude Carrière to create a six-hour version which was filmed in studio in Paris over a thirteen-week period, the actors adapting to a very different way of working and designer Chloe Obolensky transforming the visual appearance of the production with an amazing array of new sets, props and costumes, which she travelled to India to find. She scouted Delhi markets in during the pre-Monsoon heat for the patterns and materials to replace worn originals. The scaling in a film is different , she says. In theatre, even if you’re in the first row, there is distance, but in film certain colours don’t work as well, and in a close-up, the way a sleeve is edged is important, so seams had to be hand-stitched. Together with lighting cameraman William Lubchantsky - a great name

in French cinema for his work with Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut - the uniquely talented team of Brook, Carrière and Obolensky managed to use a single stage to such effect that the finished film looks as if it was shot both on location and in many different interiors, with a haunting and distinctive atmosphere that has been described as reminiscent of the feeling created by the acclaimed Japanese director Kurosawa. Chloe Obolensky says that despite the change in medium, Brook’s purpose remains the same. Peter’s talent is in suggesting, intimating, letting you see. Brook himself says of the screen adaptation: In the theatre everything was suggested to the imagination by theatrical means, but you can’t do that in the cinema; there’s something literal about a film image; you can't come in front of the camera and say: this wall is now indoors, now it’s a forest, you would lose part of the magic. So we have tried to keep the atmosphere of theatre, but shot for shot, we are always having to adapt. Michel Propper, of Les Productions du 3ème Etage, produced this televi-

sion version. □

Captions for The Mahabharata 1. The Game of Dice The poet-narrator Vyasa (left - Robert Langdon Lloyd) announces to a child (centre - Velu Vishwanadan) that he is going to tell him the history of his race. Ganesha, the god with an elephant’s head (right - Bruce Myers) offers himself as scribe for this great ’poetical history' of man’. 2. The Game of Dice On learning that her husband-to-be, King Dhritharashtra, is blind, Gandhari (Hélène Patarot) covers her eyes with a band, which she swears she will never remove.