Legends of the Taj
By Kirsten Bowen, Production Dramaturg
The history of the Taj Mahal is shrouded in mystery and legend. The building was unveiled in the northern India city of Agra in 1648 but its very inspiration starts with a rumor — that on her deathbed in 1631 Empress Mumtaz Mahal told her husband, Shah Jahan, to build her a mausoleum “more beautiful than any the world had ever seen before.” The fifth Mughal ruler of that dynasty, Shah Jahan had several wives, but none more beloved than Mumtaz Mahal, and so he set to work.
Though historians seem to agree that it took twenty thousand workers to build the monument, the actual architect remains under speculation. Official Mughal histories record thirty-seven designers and architects, who likely would have collaborated as a team to create the Taj Mahal. Iranian Ustad Isa is often credited as the chief architect, as well as his student, Ustad Ahmad, and Isa Muhammad Effendi — some sources list these men as one person. Art historian Milo Beach adds,
“Clearly it’s a building that was designed by professional architects who knew what they were doing, not by a prince and an amateur. But an architect was, in a sense, a kind of functionary. Architects and painters never achieved the kind of acclaim that placed them within the ranks of the nobility. They were recognized, but they were never given an enormous amount of importance.”
Popular legends include the tale of the dismantling of the scaffold that shielded the Taj Mahal’s dome, a covering that cost more than the entire work. When told that taking it down would be a five year process, Shah Jahan decreed that those who removed the bricks would be allowed to keep them. The scaffolding disappeared in one night. As for the story of Shah Jahan preventing something as beautiful as Taj Mahal ever being built again, this too is a legend, dismissed by historians as lacking in evidence.
Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj uses the high stakes drama of that legend to spin a story of politics, power, aesthetics, and friendship. Originally intending to write a four act play with Shah Jahan as a principle character, Joseph found himself more captivated by two of his minor characters — the clown-like guards of the Taj Mahal, Humayun and Babur.
Similar to the inhabitants of his Pulitzer Prize finalist Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (which was seen at Round House Theatre in 2012), Humayun and Babur are ordinary, unknown people who become swept up in extraordinary events beyond their control. Like Bengal Tiger and Gruesome Playground Injuries (which Woolly Mammoth produced in 2010, also under the direction of John Vreeke) Guards at the Taj features characters compelled to commit acts of violence. Unlike Kayleen and Doug of Gruesome, whose self-harm inexorably draws them together over the years, the violence carried out by Humayun and Babur forces them down separate paths of devastation and loss.
Taking a cue from the legends surrounding the Taj Mahal, Joseph has not in any way attempted to write a faithful history. Humayun and Babur speak in a colloquial, contemporary vernacular more in common with 2016 than 1648. Furthermore, the world of the play is imbued with a poetic, heightened theatricality. In this Agra not only can scaffolding come down in one night, but two men perform feats that defy time and human capability. The design of the production is also abstract, with the Taj Mahal evoked by light rather than by any literal representation. It is a Taj Mahal of the mind.
If the play is not grounded in strict reality, the questions it poses are nonetheless real and urgent in relation to the world in which we live. Joseph asks us to ponder the nature and value of beauty, and who owns and has a right to it. He asks whether it is possible to maintain freedom of the mind and spirit under a totalitarian regime in which the means of production are controlled by the few and the goal is survival. Finally, he asks, “what are the costs to a friendship when confronted with issues of power, ambition, duty, trauma, and idealism?”
By focusing in on two seemingly small characters and placing them at the center of a legendary moment in time, Rajiv Joseph integrates the highly theatrical and the deeply personal. The result is a play that questions how we view not only our world, but ourselves.
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