Holding a mirror up to Indian theatre
By Chaman Ahuja

AT long last, before breathing its last, Twentieth Century has the satisfaction of seeing with its dying eyes that the presiding deities in the Culture Department of India have not only realised the need and value of big theatre festivals but also instituted one in the capital — in collaboration with the National School of Drama. Called Bharat Rang Mahotsava, it started this year with a bang: featuring 52 plays from all over the country in 28 days, it involved a hefty budget of about 40 lakhs! It is hoped that the dawn of the next millennium will witness its graduating into an international festival, with a place beside the prestigious festivals of London (LIFT), Avignon, Edinburgh, Perth, etc.

The usual practice in such festivals is to do a lot of scouting and negotiation to ensure the presentation of the latest and the best. But, this being the first year, the red-tape took its toll and the final approval was received so late that the NSD had just six weeks for all the preparations; understandably, therefore, it had to invite what was ready and readily available. Anyway, it goes to the credit of the organisers that although the festival was rigged up in comparative hurry, the list of the participants could pass for a Who’s Who of the Indian theatre today. Ratan Thiyam and Lokendra Arambam from Manipur, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Bibhash Chakraborty and Usha Ganguli from Calcutta, K.N. Pannikar from Trivandrum, B.V. Karanth and B. Jayshree from Bangalore, Nadira Babbar, Jayadeva Hattangady and Sanjana Kapoor from Bombay, Sreeram Lagoo and Bhaskar Chandrvarkar from Pune, Lakshman Deshpande from Aurangabad, Veena Pani Chawla and R. Raju from Pondicherry, Ramaswamy from Madurai, Raghunandan and Basavalingiah from Mysore, Habib Tanveer, Bansi Kaul and Alakhnandan from Bhopal, Bhanu Bharti from Udaipur, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry from Chandigarh, Balwant Thakur from Jammu, Sanjay Upadhyaya from Patna, Bhagirathi from Assam — all were there.

And, of course, Delhi was there with every body that is anybody Amal Allana, Rajinder Nath, D R Ankur, Anuradha Kapur, Maya Rao, Satish Anand, N K Sharma, Arvind Gaur, Piyush Mishra, Avatar Sahni. In fact, there were 18 plays from Delhi, including seven productions of NSD Repertory — and that meant representation to Ram Gopal Bajaj, M.K. Raina, Mohan Maharishi. Prasanna, S. D. Dubey, Tripurari Sharma, and late Mohan Upreti.

In the given circumstances, what reached the audiences was a mixed lot — some very fresh, some that has been going on so long as to look stale, some instant and, therefore, bloodless revivals of old masterpieces. No wonder, while most of the plays were good, so few of them impressed as great productions that they were expected to be. As a fellow critic put it, here was talent aplenty but genius so rare! Anyway, replete with revivals, the festival did not represent the Indian theatre of 1999, or even of the ‘90s, but mirrored, as it were, the Indian theatre of the last two decades.

The most conspicuous trend was the growing vogue of the solo performances. There were as many as 10 such performers and what marked their pieces was not only their own virtuosity and versatility but also the vast variety of the modes of presentation. If some verged on soliloquies or monologues, some appeared exercises in mimicry or histrionics, even as some others tended to become one-man talk shows. In most of them, the narrator protagonist — e.g., Darupadi (B Jayshree), Shonu Roy Chowdhry (Swatilekha Sengupta), Aprajita (Rohini Hattangady), Daya Shankar (Ashish Vidyarthi) — told his or her own story, and the art lay in creating the illusion of his or her interactions with the other characters. The more innovative pieces were experiments in the creative utilisation of dance movements, choreographic compositions, mimicry, miming music, etc — for example, Maya Rao’s The Job, Vinay Kumar’s Brhannala, and Goutam Haldar’s Meghnad Badh Kabya. The aesthetics of this genre is still being evolved. And that is true of the narrative theatre, too — a trend that had a representative in D R Ankur’s Khana Badosh, as enacted by Hema Singh.

Another trend that one could not miss was the dominating presence of women directors —nine of them in an event that was never envisaged as women directors’ festival. They were there in their own right, as the leading directors of the country, most of whom had made it big even in the international festivals. And this goes to show that the Indian theatre stands freed from male hegemony —a fact worth celebrating!

Talking of trends, nothing was more in evidence than the fact the the pre-Independence sway of western theatre stands completely stemmed, so much so that, by and large, realism appears to be a taboo. Indeed, of the 50-odd plays, only a couple of them were in the realistic mould. It was amusing to hear a theatre-goer refusing to forgive Tripurari Sharma for not doing anything ‘creative’ to Adhe Adhureand by that he meant ‘Brechtization’ of Mohan Rakesh!

This is the inevitable consequence of the shadow of Brecht that has been hovering over India for decades. No wonder, Brecht was there in the festival through five of his plays all mounted recently during the Brecht centennial. But more than his plays, it is his kind of "epic" theatre that has been a pervading influence here. The fact, however, is that the real spirit of the Brechtian theatre has been rarely realised. Worse, thanks to his claim regarding the following of the oriental theatre, Brecht has been a model for many Indians trying to understand their own theatre. In fact, it is possible to say that the so-called new identity of Indian theatre has been no more than a variation of the "Brechtian" theatre, which is invariably interpreted as a mosaic of music, dance, and spectacle in episodic forma.

The festival bore ample evidence of this decades-long movement aiming at forging a new identity of the Indian theatre by going back to the roots via myths, rituals, history, classical Indian tradition (as enshrined in Bharata’s Natyashastra), folk forms, etc. Since, in practical terms, it has meant moving away from realistic, proscenium theatre towards total theatre, the festival would have us believe that the whole of India is just singing and dancing. Indeed, Habib Tanveer’s Kamdeva Ka Sapna, Basant Ritu Ka Apna, Amal Allana’s Nagmandala, Rattan Thiyam’s Uttar Priyadarshi, Bhaskar Chandravarkar’s Ghasiram Kotwal, K. N. Pannikar’s Karnabharam and Theya Theyam, M K Raina’s Bhand Duhai, Neelam Mansingh’s Fida, Goutam Haldar’s Meghnad Badh Kabya, R Raju’s Nandan Kathai, Bibhash Chakraborty’s Madhab Malachi Koinya, Balwant Thakur’s Mahabhoj, Satish Anand’s Daku, N.K Sharma’s Khush Anjam, Sanjay Upadhyaya’s Bidesia, and B.V Karanth’s Basti Devta Yadamma —all reminded of the movement because of the overall approach, despite a measure of diversity in themes and impact.

Being a vital part of our experimental theatre, the movement had to have some representation in the festival, but its overawing presence and the jaded quality of the productions inevitably prompted one to ask questions galore: was it still active or was it petering out; had it yielded that new identity or more, importantly, a new dramaturgy? Going by the plays in the festival, one feels that the trend continues but more as a fashion; the initial freshness and energy has gone. Maybe, one would be nearer the truth if one adds that the movement has got stuck in the rut and that those who are still pursuing it are just repeating themselves or merely reviving their old works.

Indeed, why Ghasiramagain and again, why can’t Pannikar move beyond Bhasa, why can’t Bansi come out of his Gadhon ka Mela, why should Bhanu be content with the story of Jale Ped? When people in the critical circles talk about repetition in the works of Ratan and Neelam, that may be unfair understanding of their respective signatures; but the fact remains that , thanks to the obsession with new identity and total theatre, the entire body of the Indian plays has something uncannily common and tends to look monotonously akin, if not the same. Obviously, we have landed in a blind alley. It is time it was realised that we have to take stock of the situation, reframe our aims, change our strategies, reharness our resources, and, if necessary, make a tactical retreat—partial, if not total.

Unfortunately, for almost a quarter century, there has been no fresh theatre thinking — no attempt even to learn from failures or to consolidate the gains in the light of the experience. There is perhaps no will to do that. During the month-long festival, there was just one seminar on "Theatre Today and Tomorrow" and in the medley of platitudinous inanities the only thing that got highlighted was some directors’ wish to keep the playwright out of the theatre. Thanks to this wishful thinking, theatre is getting reduced to pure entertainment.

As an epitome of experimental trends in Indian theatre, the festival underlined the fact that the productions might impress for music (Ghasi Ram Kotwal), for spectacle (Uttar Priyadarshi), For technical soundness (Nagamandala), for ensemble work (Bhand Duhai), for the use of folk elements (Raja Ka Swang), for humour (Gadhon Ka Mela), for operatic excellence (Inder Sabha), for innovative creativity (The Job,Brhannala), for experimental uniqueness (Meghnad Badh Kabya), for classical tenor (Karnabharam), for modernising a folk form (Bidesia), but, in terms of overall total impact, there is always a feeling that cries for something more. This might be good, even great, theatre, but must it be so poor as drama? Surely, in the current format, most of the ideas and problems of our time cannot be accommodated, without distorting the form or diluting the contents.

The absence of fresh theatre thinking as well as new creativity is inevitably paralleled by the want of fresh playwriting. Indeed, it is not without reason that five plays were by Brecht alone, that a dozen directors either turned to Bhasa, Shakespeare, Racine, Tagore, Amanat Lakhnavi, Dario Fo, or came out with their own scripts, that half-a-dozen productions were either adaptations or plays based on poems or novels. Of course, there were plays by our great playwrights like Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar, Mohan Rakesh, P Lankesh, G P Deshpande, but of new playwriting there was no evidence. True, an occasional play by a poet or a novelist —for example, K.B. Vaid’s Bhook Aag Hai — is always welcome but that cannot be a substitute of regular playwriting. Committed playwrights will come only if our theatre allows them space—only if we stop thinking about a theatre sans script.

One thing more. While it was an experience to see plays in so many languages, it became absolutely clear that, despite all this tall talk about our experiments in discovering a theatre idiom, language does continue to be a barrier. Actually what we have discovered are substitutes of props, not of language.

Will the new festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsava, pull Indian theatre out of the rut in which it has got stuck? Nothing can be said for certain; but who knows? Maybe, in future, when it features the latest masterpieces and facilitates more interaction among theatre workers, it might usher a new movement. Indeed, as Ram Gopal Bajaj puts it, "When so many creative minds are exposed to so many creative adventures, they are bound to think, to evaluate their own work, to see some new direction, to learn some lessons, or to find some way out of their problems. Amen!