Contemporary Indian Drama – Exploring Stage Possibilities, and Staging Possibilities
Chandradasan
One could speak fairly well only about his own life and experiences. Thus this paper is trying to position my theatre into its context and to look back into the concerns and contradictions of my life in theatre.
The story of performing drama in modern era, started with the attempts to embody the words written by the playwright with maximum efficiency and efficacy. As anywhere else, the history of modern Indian theatre was trying to embody the text written by eminent poets and playwrights. The actors personified the 'characters' as created by the author. With the flourishing conflict of words between characters, and with the suggested meaning and embedded poetry, the playwright was the master-builder of the art of Drama. The word and the literary quality was supreme and the work of the actor was to employ his talent and craft on histrionics to explore the layers of underlying meaning and sense of the text. The actors rendered the dialogues with verve and sharpness so as to add more depth and feel to the meaning and expressiveness of the word. The performance was embodying, nourishing and following the written text and the actors were instilling life into the characters and situations as sketched in the 'play'.
As the art of theatre flourished, the thrust was shifted from the text to the subtext and to the hidden layers of meaning. The effective exposition of the subtext without altering the shade and nature of the character as suggested by the playwright was identified as the true art of acting. The actor has to follow the inner life of the character and give life, emotion and expression to the written words. As the 'divine fate' ruled the destiny and life of the character, the playwright decided the fate and poetics of drama in performance. The other technicians, and musicians supplemented to increase the efficacy of the work of the author. The illusion of the world/life created on stage with the effective organisation of words, was made more concrete, physical, profane and visible by the use of scenery, lights, costume, set and other effects.
In Indian context, the authority of the word in performance is a later development that was ensued with the advent of colonialism. Formerly Indian theatre was the arena of the actor and his imaginative expression of craft acquired and nourished by systematic and continuous practice. Actors were not to follow the written text as such, but he has to interpret and create his own parallel/corollary to the literary work. He could be 'in' the character, or 'out' of the character, so as to interpret, narrate, critique, elaborate and extrapolate the written material. The playwright was not the divine idol in the ritual of Indian theatre, both in Sanskrit and folk traditions. The actor ruled the stage and the audience was keen to appreciate his impromptu ability to take the written material beyond its peripheries. The literary text was the raw material to suite the form, craft and expression of the actor.
The popular theatre of the modern era also followed this tradition. The audience went to theatre to witness and appreciate the histrionics and 'performance' of the actor. The mannerism of the actor, his style of expression and delivery of dialogue were venerated. That is why melodrama which is considered inferior in terms of literary values became the favourite material for the actor and also of the audience. Melodrama gave enough space for the actor to expose his craft and histrionics so as to produce effects and marvels on stage!
The Directors speak
Then the directors started to speak through theatre, exploring new possibilities of staging the text. With the interpretation of the text, designing of space, and the use and advent of technology and with the collaboration of allied arts, theatre fostered as an altogether distinct form. Many a times the written text was subdued and was used as a means to create the performance text. The transient and volatile language of theatre was nourished and flourished to create a new language of independent expression. The written play was reorganised, edited and mutilated to create a new narrative of visual images, expressive movements, visual poetry of moving bodies, embodiment of music and sound, symphony of orchestrated emotions, fluidity of corporal entities amalgamated with the sonority and resonance with the spoken word, and to create a new form of expression. The text was deconstructed and reconstructed to explore newer meanings that can establish contact with the time and space of performance.
Looking back, I could say that, the directors of my generation was mostly attempting to create a theatre which was still based and rooted within the written text, even if it was deconstructed or reorganised. Theatre was trying to respond and share the agony and anxiety of the people; it was trying to voice the social, cultural and political experiences of the day. The text became the means to derive the spatial and temporal connect with the present, while reciprocating to the past history. The written text was supplemented and supported with information and memories from beyond. At times, more than one text or more sources were juxtaposed to create a deeper understanding of the reality. Theatre was expressing the live experiences of contemporary life, through the live and humane medium, an aesthetic expression rooted in history, stretching its wings into the agony, aspirations and trauma of the people. The text found newer relevance in relation to the political, cultural and contemporaneity of life and society.
Theatre started voicing the marginalised and exploited; it started speaking about the story that is not written in the conventional moorings of history, it raised concerns about the socially deprived ones, about the unseen and unsaid exploitation embedded in the power structures, about the disintegration and fragmentation of social establishments, about the dynamics of power relations within a family system and in the social fabric, and many more. The text ceased to be just the narrative of the story as locked inside the time and space of the fiction and its characters. The experience of the characters were extrapolated and connected to the present day reality – the real experience of the audience.
In such an event, the director and the actor, reaffirmed the relationship between the performance and the audience, explored the body of the actor, the colour, texture and tone of the visual and auditory images. The design acquired new meaning and relevance in theatre. Theatre became interdisciplinary; art, music, and other forms acquired equal significance along with the written play to create and establish the new concerns, demands and scope of theatre. Theatre became a collaborative of many forms of expression, a collaborative of different artists including playwright, poet, designer, director, actor, visual artist, lighting designer, dancer, choreographer, traditional artists and craftsmen, and also the spectator.
Such explorations and varied resources nourished the language of theatre to take it beyond the realm of the written word. Still theatre retained the flavour of the written play or of the adapted material like the story, or poetry. The new performance language generated was in human terms and was trying to address and connect with the people.
Modified as Desi
At the same time, it is a fact that most of our directors and playwrights modelled their work on the modes of the west, in defining the narrative structure, in the approach to understand and negotiate with life, in the use of images and metaphors, and more in the philosophy towards life, artistic expression and aesthetics. This was further facilitated by the interests of colonialism and post-colonialism. It is from this long western influences- direct and indirect - that our theatre is mostly restricted to proscenium. Even the so called theatre of the roots,- the texts as well as productions - are defined by the narrative and grammar of the proscenium, with its unique frames and compositions, imageries, entries, exits etc., spiced with Indian ingredients like references of a myth, a half curtain, a song, a dance sequence or the use of a mask. This dependence on western notions of drama and theatre is visible in the craft of playwriting, designing, the mode and aesthetics of performance and its organisation.
The attitudes, dynamics and the socio-political, cultural inclinations of contemporary Indian society is getting more and more westernised. The planning, nation building, structuring of social system, values, modes of education and pedagogy, the order of governance and its priorities are all western oriented, focusing the urban elite and the mighty multinational entrepreneur. Even our elections and democratic processes are event-managed, following the successful trends from the west. If our politics and the construct of nationhood itself is open to the corporate and multinational interests of western practices, it is foolish to imagine that our theatre flourishes in native flavour. If the priorities of western modes rule every aspect of the social system, we cannot expect our theatre speaking with a native tongue. We may be framing and coining Hindi/Sanskrit words to name these western notions to make it appear as 'Desi', but the essence and inner core is developed and dictated by the capital markets and urban dreams, the neo-colonists and the so called 'entrepreneurs'. The westernised urban ethos is ruling the aesthetics, mode and structure of our performance system and the entertainment industry. The tragedy of contemporary Indian society is that our priorities, ideologies, and politics is basically westernised and urban, which is camouflaged and modified as Desi, clad in an Indian attire.
The new techno-world and its Theatre; the urchin in the global market
Theatre has always used technology to facilitate its mode of presentation. The advent of sound system, electric lights and the like has revolutionised the practise of theatre. Girish Karnad has written that one of the initial marvels that affected his understanding of drama was the introduction to the use of spot lights. The possibility of lighting a single character and focussing the light to one face, gave the opportunity to look deeper into the psychology of one person. Thus the art of playwriting could use this possibility to pursue the inner life of a character.
Technology has supported and supplemented the art of performance. It helped the actor to be more effective, make his life on stage more comfortable, and the performance appeared more focussed. But, theatre remained as a humane activity integrated around the live actor and his relation with the audience. Priorities might have changed from the playwright, actor, or the director or to the mutuality of all of these different creators of theatre, but it remained humane and connected with the spectator.
But, in the last twenty years there is a 'sea-change'. Technology became the first and foremost area of exploration and execution of theatre, at least among the new generation of directors especially from metro cities. Innovations in multi-media, live soundscapes, video streaming, computer generated garbs, virtual performances, and the like became the post-modern mantra. Multitudes of images, sounds, and their fragmented cacophony created an illusion of hyper reality. Theatre was transformed as a collage of disorganised, disjointed images that lacks any specificity to a meaning or feeling. The emotional content of the expression is lost; both the actor and the playwright disappeared or made lifeless on stage. Theatre became more mechanised, technical, and less humane. The argument is that contemporary life is overtly ruled by mechanisation, gadgets, technology, and a plethora of sounds and images surrounding us in every possible environment; this theatre is just a bye-product of such a grotesque situation. Theatre seizes to speak about the society at large, because such a social connection do not exist. The society is fragmentised and highly individualised; every act has turned to be egocentric, closed and personal. So do theatre; it turned out as the expression of the individual, and it no longer is concerned about the collective.
However, still I feel, that theatre has to be humane, live, emotive, concerned with the people, reinforcing the social instincts of man, reflecting and imaging one another, and rooted in the ground reality of the life around us. Theatre has to be actor-oriented, with a narrative that can connect with the audience; the written text becomes important even if it is not to be followed with at most reverence. The design has to mutually link the written play, with the actor's faculties of expression, and the experience of the immediate society.
The Stage possibilities Vs the staging possibilities.
Another very important question that arises is about the staging possibilities of a production. Where do we perform a play and what is the kind of patronage and from whom? The society which is disintegrating fast has withdrawn from the responsibility of patronising or supporting theatre. The state support is minimal and almost void. It is demeaning that there is little public space, available for assembling, rehearsing and for performance. The common spaces are disappearing very fast with the fortification of the new economic scenario of market oriented globalisation. Theatre has ceased to be the concern nor is the engagement of the public. People find carnivals, exhibitions, and malls to spend their time and leisure as the new means of engagement and entertainment.
Then the other options are to search for corporate sponsorship and also depend on those very few major theatre festivals for survival. The theatre festivals in India is in the process of making its own cult which advocates a monolithic 'festival' genre; since most of the festivals are 'curated' by the same set of like-minded people. If the corporates becomes the patron, naturally theatre will end up as a harmless, toothless show of pretentions. Strangely the festival genre and the theatre supported by the multinationals happens to be of the same school; a school of new elitism, which has no real connection to the Indian reality, in social, cultural, political, aesthetic or performative realms.
In such a scenario each theatre group has to find its own resources, means and modes of survival. Thus exploring staging possibilities becomes a bigger priority to the contemporary Indian theatre than exploring stage possibilities of performance. May be both will be corollary and complementary; innovation in one may lead to the other. That is my hope.
©chandradasan, January, 2015.
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