Theatre Journey

The Theatre Journey

(Where audience of my theatre will become an active part of the action.)

The European people taught us modern form of Theatre and then, we are coping them till the date with little variations. Then street theatre started grooming-up since 60 `s. Beside this two forms a few people have tried to do different things in their own way. I might be considered to be one of them. After a long walk in the theatre I have raised few questions in front of myself, what is Theatre? What is a Play? What is an Actor? What is the relationship between them? What conditions best serve the relationship? When a performance is over, what remains? Is communication my only criteria? Is theatre possible beyond stage and street? Is it only a literary form of expression? What might be the role of music here; is it only to entertain? Why should I continue doing theatre if itself doesn’t change?

With all those questions in my mind I decided to work on something new more experimental. The word " experiment" for me, a journey towards "unknown" means to work in a crucial area to challenge my present state of being. If I want to confront that challenge, I should go through the series of shocks, the shock of confronting self in the face of irrefutable challenges. The shock of my own escape, tricks, cliches. The shock of becoming aware of my vast untapped resources within me . The shock of being forced to question myself.

What is acting and actor? This is a question can give birth of an organic actor, who have explored their deepest and eased to act and become a human being, only these actors can guide audience into the experience. Now what is organic actor? The actor, who create a meaningful thing out of nothing. Is it possible to create an organic actor? I don’t know;but,why should not I try?

I want to create my own actors, own rituals, own ceremonies, to discover a meaningful theatre for me. I have no pretensions about unmasking other people, but to unmask my own experience and myself of personal truth. I believe this kind of confrontation leads to changes. I am trying to come out of myself to perform life without a mask. It is the acting of confrontation, a whole theatre of irresistible contradictions.It demands to strip off the outward personality, mannerism, habit,vanity, tricks,cliché and stock responses. I need to share-off my conditioning to see life differently.
I am not looking for so called ' communication' which are often used by N G O's now. I believe, when theatre is true, there is a challenge of perception.Generally we are blind to reality but when life or some aspect of life is perceived most intensely ,then it is a real food for the innermost. When a performance is over,what remains? Fun can be forgotten, emotions also disappear after a few days, well written dialogues are also forgotten. But it is harvested from the people truly to see it more clearly into the memory ,an outline, a taste, a smell, a picture. It is the central image a silhouette, that remains.This silhouette is the essence of what it has to say.

I am concerned to build a bridge between the conscious and unconscious, the feeling and the intellect within actors and audience. I need a partnership of audience and actor.because their relationship is close and real in which feelings and emotions can be spontaneously expressed. Even the disliking can be shared.

This new way of behaving can be risked and tried out and only then further growth becomes possible. The emotional, physical or mental barriers we carry with us in our personal lives inhibits our full creative expression. We need to realize fully of human creative potentials in terms of being able to develop effectively as actor and as creator.The emotional blocks are damaging our artist growth. The old cliché form is not working. This is time to reach -out a new form of theatre where everything would be experienced for the first time containing risk, spontaneity, mobility, exposure and intensity . i not only believe in poetry of language. I also believe in poetry of space, music, painting, chanting, archistructural shape, and lighting. Expressing an idea with the help of these elements are much stronger than spoken language. All true feeling in reality is not possible to translate; that is why I am stressing on image, an allegory, an abstraction, a metaphor which are much stronger than speech. I may be trying to make a journey towards impossible but not vague. And i am determined to start my journey.



When I talk about story-telling, its not just coping another form of Pandavani or any other oral traditional form, I want to work on two level. One is to force the listener to increase their imagination level in a height in other hand to experiment with sounds. Grotowski said ' an actor must be able to express through sound and through movement. In this form, the movement are not seen but sounds have the crucial role to play. Voice is the audible expression of a human's inner being. I don’t understand why most of the actors make their voice choreographed, robotic, monotonous, cramped. It should be the expression of whole personal experience. The human voice is very much structured, conditioned by the society .It can be extended, developed. We generally listen the words as per their dictionary meaning context. But, there is tone in which describes the context of expression. Actor's voice should represent what is going on at the center of gravity in his consciousness at that moment. If the mind is clear and experience of the moment is actual and true, then a simple word can transmit volumes.
So i need to work on eight vocal resonators to increase their range and possibilities up to the extent like Baul, Sufi's or may be more doesn't follow any grammar but follow a discipline. It's a liberation of voice to discover it in our human body deserves a hard practice to explore the resonators within our body. A try to liberate the tensions through sounds. The voice have to be open and ready . The emotions of voice have to be open and free. Only then it strikes the heart of the listeners, doesn't work only in cerebral level. In story telling form this would my target to reach.


PROBIR GUHA