Theatre in India,
a dilemma
by Chandradasan
I was not conscious of the basic inspirations
or the nature of the theatre I wanted to do, in the first phase of my
work. I had some models in front to follow. The chance to see Avanavan
Kadamba, one of the best plays ever produced in my state, written by
Kavalam Narayana Panikker, directed by G.Aravindan and performed by
a host of celebrated actors including Nedumudi Venu, Natarajan, Krishnan
kutty Nair, Jagannathan, and Gopi was a real eye opener and motivation.
Also the productions by R.Narendra Prasad at the Natyagraham, the creations
by young directors and writers of the seventies including T.M.Abraham,
Omcheri, Indukumar, and P.Balachandran revealed new vistas in theatre.
I cite these names not just to refer and remember, but since these people
represented the wide spectrum of the various possibilities and tendencies
of the theatre practice in Kerala, of the seventies.
Then there is the cult figure that really
schooled theatre into me and my generation - Prof G.Sankara Pillai,
the devoted theatre missionary. He was the immediate inspiration and
source of energy for me so that I continued my theatre. Along with S.Ramanujam
and the different theater persons who came to teach and do productions
in the School of Drama Trichur, Prof G.Sankara Pillai instilled the
passion and urge to pursue theatre in my generation and me. (I was not
a regular student of the School, but was a frequent visitor.) The workshops,
lectures, writings, the regular interactions, along with their productions
developed a new sensibility to theatre, a method of doing, an ethics
and discipline, and slowly developed the aesthetics. The credentials
that mold an artist may not a single guru or root, but may be a hybridized
product of many sources, ideologies, experiences and exposures. But
there will be a major influence; a kind of primary image of impetus.
In my case it happened to be Prof G.Sankara Pillai and the School of
Drama. The workshops and the sessions introduced Stanislavski, Anton
Artuad, Samuel Beckett, Ionesco, Brecht, Pinter, Growtovsky and Genet
and Shaffer and Edward Bond and Robert Wilson and others and others
to us…. All the new tendencies, theorization and current happenings
of the rest of the repertory of world theatre was exposed to us along
with the rich theatre heritage of India and other Asian countries was
exposed to us. More important is that theatre was taught to us very
seriously like any other academic activity. It developed a method to
all aspects of theatre execution, including the selection of the script
and its interpretation, the system of blocking and designing, to the
construction of the performance text, to the work on the actor, and
to the mobilization of resources. Theatre became a cultural activity
that needed an expertise and professional competence. All this awareness
was distilled to us through the schooling and also from the master directors
in our time. Like the silent and invisible god who controls and dictates
the fate, NSD remained away from us, in far north. Now I understand
that that it is from this master institution and the great Alkazi that
the new system and the sensibilities were distilled to us.
Then there were the other influences; influence
from the then contemporary poetry, fiction and practice of literature,
culture, doctrine and philosophies of the day. Again the west was the
model or the cult icon of the seventies. And political activity went
no longer a cultural activity and my generation got more and more disillusioned,
and detached themselves from this mainstream activity. Literature was
filled with surreal, metaphysical narratives; fantasy and personal imageries
that drifted more and more to the abstract. Direct narrative was folded
and mutilated to many expressionistic and new articulatory techniques.
Even the language was handled such a way that its constructions looked,
read and sounded like the translation from an alien language and lost
its native flavor. This no doubt elevated the artistic expression from
the mundane to the high land of aesthetic and mystic experiences and
equipped the artist or the writer to portray and address the more complex
layers of life. With a broader spectrum of authorship, with a more elaborate
sensibility and equipment, our literature and thought become par with
the international. It was very normal that the new trends and the narrative
structure in literature diffused to the stage to add to the experiments
on theatre and its aesthetics, rigorously and meticulously.
Thus with the exposure to the contemporary
western literature, along with the schooling in theatre created a hitherto
unknown world of modernistic sensations in Kerala theatre. Many western
plays from Brecht, Beckett, Pinter and Genet were produced and performed
even in rural stage to the astounded villagers. I myself have produced
Deathwatch for a village theater group in 1986. The rural spectator
was astonished and we in turn were thrilled and proud that the theatre
scene in Kerala became more and more experimental, modern and elite.
But suddenly the excitement was over and
the villager went away from these obscurantism and experimental activities
in theatre. The initial anxiety and the shock of the ordinary theatergoer
were settled soon. He cannot relate his experiences, sensibilities,
life and being, with those abstract and strange situations and atmosphere
portrayed in this theatre. It did not express the nation, its culture,
history and aesthetic sensibilities.
The attempt to evolve an indigenous theatre
was going on almost parallel to these western influences. Kavalam Narayana
Panikker was going ahead with his own search and G.Sankara Pillai told
us that 'the theatre of the earth is never dead' and we have to explore
in our own roots. But many of these inquiries lacked the emotional energy,
characteristic of true theatre experience and were not related to contemporary
experiences. The proscenium arch was destroyed and the productions came
down to non-conventional spaces and the traditions of folk performances
were reborn as a new tool of expression. Many youngsters including me
followed this new inquest. Various art forms, - archaic to the recent,
crude and raw to the flimsy and finished, rituals to dance-dramas- were
revisited with a new purpose and energy.
Thus now I understand that my theatre is
to be molded on my own past life and its environment if I really want
to communicate effectively to my people. The style, form and technique
(and what else) should evolve from my own encountering with the past,
present and local and specific culture, its spatiality and temporality.
That is my theatre should be rooted in that little pastoral, agrarian
village in Kerala in which I was born and brought up. The colorful festival
processions going up the curved village path up the little mound form
the movement pattern; the fierce rites of the black magic and exorcist
rituals witnessed in the childhood is giving the emotional ecstasy;
the folk rhyme from the paddy field to overcome the exertion of the
tiring labor and the solo songs of the wavering drunkard fading in and
away at nights gave the sense and function of music; the ecstasy with
which the devotee, with an arrow pierced right through his cheeks, who
dances as if he is possessed formulated the energy to confront the pressure
and strain of the performance; the stories the village told me at different
ages of my growth drafted the narrative style and technique; the different
village locale like the paddy field, playing ground, the secret meeting
places in the bushes, and the awesome graveyard surrounded by high walls
gave the stage construction and scenic designs; the heroes, gods, semigods,
demons, ancestors, and the simple living mortals become the characterizations;
the various idols and icons carried by the church procession and the
community of the untouchables during the festivals turned to be potential
images; the reality of the life around in totality formed the storylines;
and of course the subtlety with which the villager suggested his agonies
anxieties, and his reactions to the life around, through his narration
taught the essence and the subtlety of the craft and art of theatre.
Thus the village with its colour; life, emotions, tragedies celebrations
and spectacles, did invoke the theatre in me.
But even these searches to our own roots were not spared free from the
strong influences of the western perceptions and its aesthetic understanding.
Rustum Bharucha criticizes on these indigenous theatre by examining
the works of Rattan Thiyyam.
"Thiyyams theatre, I would say, has been strongly influenced by
his exposure to proscenium theatre, as represented to him by his mentor
Alkazi, at the National School of Drama. His framing of action, timings
of exits and entrances, lateral groupings, use of cyclorama, and above
all, his tacit refusal to confront the audiences with break in the narrative
or direct addresses – these are conventions that strongly uphold
the illusion of the fourth wall"
I quote this criticism since I feel that this can be referred to any
contemporary theatre practitioner in India, and is a general observation.
The forth wall is not the basic problem. But it is the educated aesthetics
and the priorities it demands for achieving a professional standard
in the execution of theatre is the real block. And this standard is
formulated somewhere in the west, mainly in the academic discourses
in RADA, and in the professional houses in Broadway or in some other
cities of America and Europe. Thus criteria of this professional excellence
was measured in the perfection of the craft of the actor and the stage
technicalities, so as to represent and create a smooth, soft and aesthetically
appealing product. The practices and priorities were reset to achieve
a professionally perfect "process" and "product"
as dictated by the western sensibilities and perceptions to life. Thus
theatre became more and more an elite urban activity and it went away
from the rural Indian heartland in soul and substance. The political
and cultural features that marked the histrionic tradition and sensibilities
of the true Indian become secondary, or even a non-concern in this mad
chase for professionalism. Even our nativity was reinvented to address
the demands of the western RADA based sensibilities. Many of our myths
and folk tales are retold and fabricated in tune to suit the western
sensuality and sexuality according to Freudian or similar perceptions.
For the western academic, theatre is another 'professional practice'
and the art of preparing a good wrapper of glossy coverage so as to
enable easy selling became the liability of art. The primary reason
and characteristic of theatre - its spontaneity, the informal ambience,
its vital and organic nature, the transparency and openness, the proposition
to the spectator to join and complete the creation, and the possibility
that the experience in theatre can grow beyond the production, - is
lost. Theatre is not 'presentation', 'representation' or a mere exposition
of craft and a 'show' as emphasized by the occidental academic.
Unfortunately our theatre education and
schooling was initiated from and modeled on the priorities of RADA and
RADA educated gurus. The Indian narrative and the performance technique
that can transcend the barriers of class and cast differences are easily
forgotten. Our theorization is limited only to the urban reality, many
a times limited to the Mandi house area. Our Schools of drama including
NSD are not accepting and aiming at the potential audience or the performance
possibility outside the city limits. In fact we are continuously addressing
to the 'non Indians' living in a few Indian cities and to the very minority
academic activities in some universities. We are only catering to the
fake sensibilities of these intellectuals who are uprooted and away
from the Indian reality through our arty, spectacular, big-budgeted
productions embedded with abstract imageries, symbols and slippery 'sub-texts'.
The many western agencies and funds who patronize and finance the theatre
activities in India are also compelling as to be less penchant, less
sharp, less bounded to the time and place of action and encourages us
to research "into the universality of the temporal experiences".
(By alienating a native practice from its roots of life, place and context
to a more generalized and academic placement is to de-energize it, take
of the vitality and life essence out, and in effect to castrate it).
And productions with a fake physicality, accompanied by a lot of human
activity wasted and exercise bordering the gymnastics and circus is
encouraged. Many of these activities have only academic interest. And
at least in Kerala many of the theatre people who has been funded has
stopped theatre itself. They seem to have lost all reasoning and pretend
not to understand the meanings of their own words, actions and their
being, and blissfully lost somewhere is the euphoria of the alcoholic.
Really, the accident deaths of many anarchists! And the tragedy is that,
they were the radical youth who did powerful and meaningful theatre
in there pre-funded days.
We have to reaccept the fact that our theatre
tradition is so strong to address many a situation and demands of the
time, to express and communicate directly, effectively and with a real
contemporaniety. We should re-emphasize that one of the real masters
of Indian theatre, Shri Habib Thanveer discovered that it is better
to quite RADA, and relive the vital energy of the unadulterated tribal
of Chatisgad to develop his theatre. Also remember the famous statement
put forward by Badal Sircar that, for theatre to be meaningful, it has
to be 'amateur' and not professional.
I feel that a conscious attempt has to be
revitalized to reinvent an alternative Indian theatre free from the
formalistic, urbanized and elite aestheticism. The craftsmanship of
theatre has to be replaced with a more direct, simple, open, transparent,
vital and energetic form in tune content and aboriginal culture. Theatre
has to be again native, addressing to the problems, ecstasies and agonies
of the time and place and accept an India outside the city limits and
the Mandi house premises in reality, when formulating its theory and
practice. It seems that we need a de-schooling even to our schools of
drama and free them from the overemphasis in aesthetic concerns like
continuity in texture, compositional balancing and the brain storming
attempts to create a theatre of images and symbols and from the visual
gibberish.
We have to accept the villagers and their
sensibilities as valid in Indian theatre than the western cultural imperialist.
We have to identify the new colonial forces and the new fundamentalist
tendencies operating around the globe, including India to form and redefine
the priorities of theatre.
There is an important new trend in society,
a soft totalitarianism, and right out of the middle of society, in the
name of morality and compassion. The irony is that this new totalitarianism
always refers to the dangers of fascism to support its demands for new
moral codes and regulations. This withdrawal behind an apparently unassailable
moral barricade serves simply to justify a climate of moral insinuation,
witch-hunting and criminalisation. And this is the climate to which
even literature, and theatre and art in general must bow today. Apparently
that is where the problem starts, so let us not walk in circles, starting
the discussion all over again.
We have to repeat that we cannot rely on
a single model of theatre practice, -devising of the tools and technology
of operation, definition of the aesthetics, and construction of a play
and playing area, text and performance text, etc- along a simple and
singular monolithic structure. We have to accept the life, and experiences
of the very different cultures and traditions of the many races co-living
as this single nation, as a republic of cultures in the true sense.
These words can be titled and concluded that this is the Dilemma of
a contemporary and aspiring theatre practitioner in India and aspiring
for the evolution of an alternative and post-Alkazian theatre.
©2003 Chandradasan
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