Behind the mask with Jacob Rajan

By GILBERT WONG

Let's start with a clarification. Yes, actor Jacob Rajan does hold a degree in microbiology. No, science is none the worse for his decision to stride the stage rather than hit the lab bench.

Rajan recalls sitting a physics exam at Massey University. He got a D. He sat again in the summer makeup exams. Second time around he received an E.

Rajan's laugh is self-mocking: "I did wonder at that point if it was too late to go back to the D."

But astrophysics was different. Cosmology, the beginning, extent and final limits of the universe. The birth of galaxies and the death of stars. In astrophysics reside the grand ideas of our times.

Not that they preoccupied Rajan's thoughts at the time. Then a year out of drama school, the fledgling actor travelled to India to experience Indian theatre.

He had packed Stephen Haw-king's A Brief History of Time and, while visiting his grandmother in Kerala, he came across a paragraph about the Indian scientist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar — and he knew he had something.

When 19, Chandrasekhar had an idea, backed by calculations, that would win him the Nobel Prize 54 years later. His mathematical theories predicted that when stars of a certain mass collapse they coalesce into black holes, a new state of matter that exists between a star's incandescence and nullity.

The more Rajan researched the scientist the more he came to admire his sense of grace. "I see him as incredibly meticulous and dignified. He possessed this immaculate grace that is reflected in his work and yet had this poetic soul."

Like art, science at the highest levels is a supreme creative endeavour.

When Chandrasekhar accepted the Nobel, he summed up his work by saying: "The simple is the seal of truth. And beauty is the splendour of truth."

The experiences of Rajan's visit, subsequent reading on Chandrasekhar, and long months in development, became The Candlestickmaker, the second production by Rajan and his colleague in the Indian Ink Theatre Company, Justin Lewis. Commis-sioned for and premiered at the International Festival of Arts this year, the play has received rave reviews.

Their first production, Krish-nan's Diary, won them a Fringe First Award at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival and was the 1997 Chap-man Tripp Production of the Year, a runaway theatre success perhaps matched only by Ladies' Night, written by Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair.

Finally, after months of evolution, Auckland audiences will experience the latest work from the man behind the masks.

In this play Rajan plays three characters: a young Indian-New Zealander on his first visit to India; his uncle, an ageing and decaying scientist; and a mysterious 300-year-old cook, pining for a lost love. He is accompanied on stage by actor and puppeteer Kate Parker and musician Craig Lee.

As in Krishnan's Diary, there is live music and a self-mocking humour and gentle wisdom throughout, held together by Rajan's tightrope performance which at times means switching between three characters in 10 lines of dialogue.

The play is imbued with a virtuosity courtesy of Parker's puppetry and Rajan's warm stage presence. He is master of that rare commodity where feelgood theatre dips into the deepest human concerns without a tremor of angst.

The mask-work, a tradition that has precedents in ancient Indian theatrical forms and in Italian commedia dell'arte, dating back to medieval times, is a passion for Rajan and Lewis.

Rajan has been a convert since completing a workshop with Melbourne-based theatre guru John Bolton, with whom Lewis trained.

The two met when Rajan was working on his drama school monologue. Rajan was a performer and Lewis, also a drama school graduate, was a director. They both knew the potential of masks and realised it was a rare technique in New Zealand theatre.

The India Ink Theatre Company was a logical step to combine their complementary interests and skills.

The Candlestickmaker allows Rajan to deal with the issues of a hybrid heritage more directly than before. His character of the young Indian-New Zealander is by turns confused, insightful and always a little lost in the homeland of his parents.

"Oh yes, there's definitely an India of my own making in the play," Rajan says. "I make huge apologies in the programme notes for trampling all over the whole culture and religion."

Each of his visits has been different. "When I was 16 it was the roots, meeting this family that I never knew who treated me like a long-lost son. The sense of family is so much stronger than here.

"The next time, at 27, I felt my links to New Zealand more strongly and was aware of how much I missed friends from home."

On his visits to India, Rajan, now 34, felt the ambivalence that those with mixed heritage often report. India was the homeland, but not home. For him, home was the Wellington suburb of Porirua where Rajan grew up. His father was a psychiatrist and his mother an NZ Post manager. He has two older brothers.

There was no moment of epiphany when he realised he would become an actor. "It took me a while to decide. I had to do these zigzag manoeuvres. It might be a cultural thing.

"My parents were born in India. They came on a huge journey to the bottom of the world. Certainly there is a need to be successful to justify the move. Success mostly means money — and if you talk about money it's not in the arts."

At teacher's college in Wellington Rajan found he was good at drama and good entertaining children rather than teaching them. He was accepted for drama school when he was 27.

It was as an actor, fresh out of drama school, that he decided to revisit India to study traditional performing arts like the kathakali dancing which features in The Candlestickmaker. The actors he met were like actors anywhere, struggling to make a living.

"When you have a country where half the population hasn't enough to eat, every artist scratches for a living. But there's a whole devotional side to acting in the traditional theatre forms that retell Indian myths, which is very inspiring and intrinsic to the way of living.

"They're respected in the way priests are. They're seen as the bringers of the light."

For Rajan and Lewis, the success of Krishnan's Diary and the good houses enjoyed by The Candlestickmaker in Wellington and Hamilton belie the precarious existence of actors.

Rajan refers to a book he has been reading, Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible.

"She writes about how the wolf was not at the door but salivating at the edge of the year. That's our perpetual state. We're perceived as successful, but this is our reality. We book the houses, but if there's a power cut or we can't go on then it's a huge risk for us."

As an actor, Rajan has performed in other roles, on Short-land Street and in other theatre productions. But the need to write his own material has always been paramount. This is partly an artistic decision and for Rajan that is more satisfying. Undeniably, it is also borne of necessity.

"When I went to drama school I knew I wouldn't get regular work as an Indian actor," Rajan says. "I wouldn't get advertising work. Let's face it, Indians aren't part of popular culture. If I had no intention of creating my own work, or was unable to, I would have to think seriously of other options."

But that hasn't happened and Rajan and Lewis show little sign of running dry creatively. They are at work on their third production, The Pickle King, a title which comes with the rider: "What's worth preserving in this life." And there is the distinct possibility that Krishnan's Diary might tour India next year.

"There's a whole middle-class that is completely English-speaking," Rajan says. "It would be an anthropological piece for them. The stuff we're saying (arranged marriage, the origins of the Taj Mahal) is no big news for them. Still, it would be interesting and quite a surreal experience for our audience and us."

* The Candlestickmaker with Jacob Rajan, directed by Justin Lewis, at the Maidment Theatre from September 6 to 23.