Theatre for Everyone

Everything is Theatre
by Probir Guha

We all quote the famous Shakespeare saying, “The World is a Stage and
we are all actors” but seldom do we interpret it correctly. Just
think, we are all performing day and night, even when we are asleep.
Out of us, those who proclaim this we recognise them as “Actors”. This
is not true for all the “performing arts”. It is true only for
Theatre, TV and Film. If we change the word “Actor” to “Performer”
then we are all performing every time. Be it the dancer, the magician,
the neighbourhood tooth-powder seller, the “hajmi” pill seller in the
train, the shopkeeper, the colourful callgirls at the metro station
and park street, the fish-seller in the market, the school-college
teachers, the corporate employee and the boss, the politician, the
students and their parents, the labourer, the farmer, the street
beggar – everybody…everyone of us are perpetually performing. Some of
us aware, some unaware, some proclaim, some don’t, some willingly,
some unwillingly are – but all of us are performers.

You may be experienced in some of the aspects but are inexperienced in
most of the other aspects of these various “performances”. May be you
are a very famous teacher. You have visited your friend house and have
developed a very close friendship with his little daughter. And the
little daughter is lovingly requesting you to tell her a “Ghost Story”
But, neither do you believe in ghosts nor do you know how to prepare a
story. You never even imagined that such a situation might develop and
you will have to perform the role of a “Story-teller”. Your mind is
filled with tomorrow’s meeting with the education council where you
will have to put up your case for getting your book on “Economics”
passed for this years school syllabus. How will you stand in front of
them, how will you answer their queries… what if it is not passed… how
will you console yourself? All your life you have undermined “actors”
and made very effort to keep you loved ones away from theatre and
acting. Now, you are getting it… not only the so called “actors” but
we all have to “perform”.

Let us imagine that our mind is divided into 3 parts – Conscious,
sub-conscious and unconscious. Conscious is our mindfulness. It is
affected by our social system, our ancestral heritage, our moral
sense, our religion and is reflected in our personality. Every body
has five constituents – awareness, emotion, rationale, lust and
mobility, all intertwined together. The senses of sight, sound, smell,
touch and taste gives the brain the input which results in some
reaction in the body. “Conscious” is what we can communicate to
others, through speech or writing, appropriately or inappropriately,
completely or partially. But there are a lot of things in my mind
about which most of the time I do not think about nor do I tell
anyone. These are hidden deep inside dark alleys of our mind.
Sometimes they surface and again disappear. I know about them but they
are suppressed. This is the Sub-conscious state. And beneath this the
last layer is the Unconscious. The Conscious and Unconscious are the
visible portion or the tip of the “ice-berg” whereas the sub-conscious
is the 90% submerged portion of the “ice-berg”. That portion where I
have not yet ventured into neither have I seen it or understood it.
But it exists! The symptoms are visible every now and then. Just like
rashes, fever, boils, sore and cysts appear as physical manifestation
of some hidden illness in our body, the sub-conscious thoughts
sometimes manifest in our life. The unconscious, hidden in the
darkness of our mind, is an area of immense potential. It is the
centre of all my creativity and new thoughts. It suddenly rises in our
mind and sometimes in our dreams. What I dream is my unconscious. Most
of a persons “Goodness” is all accumulated in these “Unconscious”
thoughts. But these are suppressed due to my restricted freedom of
expression. Inside me there is a thief and a policeman. I can do a lot
of things but I don’t do it, can think a lot but I don’t. All that I
do or don’t do, think or I don’t think are guided by my own
thief-police morality. My morality has been nourished by my social
surroundings and thus is governed by the do’s and don’ts of the social
structure that we live in. For example, if you are in Europe you may
kiss a girl in broad daylight if you wish to, no body will even bother
to stop by and look at you, but in India forget “kissing” even the
thought of it is sacrilege. My morality will never allow that to
happen. There are two types of “Morality”, one, is reflected in my
external behaviour which in turn is influenced by my immediate
society, and the other is reflected in my internal being, which is
mostly influenced by what we call “my Habits”. The part of my
“morality” that is influenced by my “habits” we call that “The Person”
and the part that is influenced by the society, the part which is my
external behaviour is “the Personality”. We are only able to perceive
this “ Personality” and the “Person” always remains hidden from us.
Within this “person” is also hidden all my real characteristics.
Sometimes even we ourselves are unable to see the “Person”. We “act”
as if the “personality” that others are able to perceive is the
“person” that I am which is totally incorrect. So, you see, whatever
little we know about each other, including ourselves is actually the
“Tip of the Iceberg”. The real “you” is hidden in the submerged part
of the Iceberg. That is why it is imperative to try to search the real
“You”. This is where “Theatre” can help you. “Theatre” can be the
medium of your search.

Let’s take another perspective. I have come to watch a play. The scene
starts with a boy and a girl. The girl is Muslim and the boy Hindu.
They are deeply in love with each other and they are very tense, he is
a Hindu and she a Muslim, will their parents accept their
relationship? Both of them decide that they will honestly and without
fear tell their parent about their relationship. They do tell their
parents and they happily accept them. But, they are get worried
whether the society will accept it or not? Will they be outcast? They
too decide to go and seek permission from the Villagers. They call a
meeting of the village panchayat and apprise the village folks about
the situation. And the villagers happily agree to the proposal. The
Hindu girl gets married to the Muslim girls and the villagers bless
the married couple. Both the boy and the girls were schoolteachers.
Luckily in accordance to the pay commission’s recommendation they both
get a hefty hike in their pay. That year the monsoon is also good and
the villagers have a good harvest – the couple is happy the villagers
are happy and everywhere there is peace and happiness – how do you
find this story? Boring and too perfect, isn’t it? Right! We don’t go
to the cinema / natak to see this “All’s well” “Everything’s perfect”
kind of depictions. If drama does not have violence, treachery, lust,
cruelty, fighting, confrontations, etc. then we do not even consider
it as “drama”. We want to see theft, dacioty, murder, riot, rape, and
depravity in drama/Natak. Which means we want to see “negative”,
“sick” characters. That’s why on stage, we “actors” have to act as
these “sick” characters. The “Sickness” is present in our
“Unconscious” state. I try to explore this “unconscious” through
Theatre. Those who do this knowingly, with full awareness, are
treading a dangerous path, and I believe these people are the real
actors…Theatre means to search oneself in his own darkness. A Zen monk
once said – To search and finally find the non-existant needle in a
dark room, is called Zen. Is this Zen or Theatre? Or is it all
synonymous? This search…for the “Pagoler Paroshpathor” – the fanatic’s
search for the magic stone… which we find and loose and search again…
this search is called “Art”. What we eventually find… we call that
“Craftsmanship”. Thus Craft is the reproduction of pre-existing
models. But, Art discovers essences. The act of converting those “sick
characters” into “healthy characters” and developing my own good
qualities is what I call “Theatre”.

Whether you engage in theatre or not, if you really want to be the
proud owner of a “healthy character” you have to learn the art of
“performance”. And also encourage your children to learn it… So, what
are you waiting for… every day is a new day and it is never too late
to start.

--
.Probir Guha

AALAP THEATRE

• ALAAP THEATRE
  
• 
  
• When I started confronting audience in open air in my performance. they often come forward to take part in some action or participated in some dialogue. We have many outstanding experiences about those thing. In 84,when I got the book of Augusto Boal in my hand, I came to know about almost similar experiences is being done by him also. The book was thrilling. I started realizing, in my theatre what happens some time, not obvious. But in Boal’s theatre its deliberate. It is made to force audience to interact. I decided to work on it. Meanwhile, I saw some of the work of Boals disciples here in India. Those seemed to me just the poor try to copying his work. After seeing this, one can decide not to interact with this form any more. Interestingly, It is not the fault of the form, but the understanding his form. I believe Theatre is very much region specific. It needs to be Indianised.I started working on it. And slowly it started taking shape through trial and error method. Our country is living within Culture of Silence. We are very shy to express our wishes directly. We love to seat on the last bench. We like not to talk first. If I am forced to say, I repeat the former friend’s speech. So, we need a different methodology to force them to talk. Indians are very emotional .And I work in this area. I generally take a social or political issue which has a great concern on our society. My Oppressed person/s are about to take decision of committing suicide. And then, Sutradhar stops it and starts asking suggestions from audience. Among many suggestions, the sutradhar chooses one and asks the actors to improvise the scene. Here within the actors have a secret contract not to solve the problem. And then sutradhar again asks for next suggestions from them. And it continues till it finds a saturation.

Theatre of Probir Guha

1Expressions/‘pure’ physicality: Alternative Language of Theatre (ALT in Bengal)

Benil Biswas

“This is a theatre that prides itself in violating conventions of dramatic art. It does not use any language, any written script or any accessories, moving the dramatic action from the proscenium stage to the open lawns, enacting images of oppression and plight of the victimised sinking deeper in their misery and degradation.”, comments Diwan Singh Bajeli, noted theatre critic¹ after seeing a show by the Alternative Living Theatre.

The plays doesn’t have any written script and uses no spoken language than the question arises what is the medium of communication.... here it is the body, body is used in a very “political” sense, and to bare it all to us, as if to urge us to rethink not just “how” of theatre, but also the “what” of theatre.

Every body- Every body is political; and it speaks: through our physical expressions, our gestures and mimic, our body tells stories about our background, about what mood we are in, about what we would like people around us to do, etc. Our decoding or reading of body language has been shaped throughout our lives by the culture we live in. Without thinking, we perceive or interpret certain gestures in a certain way. To cut it short, as Susan Bordo so succinctly puts it; “the body ... is a medium of culture”.²

Of course, in modern theatre like a resurrection of the phoenix, this notion of culture specificity resurrected a few decades ago, giving birth to new mode and languages of theatre and worthy sons of theatre like Bhanu Bharti's "Pashu Gayatri", Ratan Thiyan's "Chakravyuh", Prasanna's "Huliya Neralu" and Bansi Kaul's "Khel Guru Ka", whose production ware considered to be landmark in contemporary Indian Theatre. Guha's¹

“Ahalya” -a unique theatrical experiment with the body came to national attention when he shared the stage with the above mentioned doyens on the lawns of the Sangeet Natak Akademi way back in 1984 at the Natya Samaroh.

As in India, the physical theatre or the dominance of a strict code of the body was quite a feature of the classical- folk- traditional theatre, so these directors found the need and sites of practice of this pure physical theatre in our modern theatrical domain, and in the process found out elements of the traditional performances from the past rejuvenated in our times, liberating it in both the sense. Liberating modern theatre as it breaks free from already fixed expressions, stale verbality and creating new; ways of expressions, and on the other hand introducing the new generation to the traditional performances, where they could connect themselves with their own past.

Of course, this ritual and cultural representation alone in its form, divorced from the relationship to the practical entity of the body is a limiting one. Infact, the body has to go through the transformation in the social order, on the contrary we just tend to understand it in terms of culture. We don’t understand that it is the body that is conditioned by the routine table manners, toilet, and other civic amenities, is slowly drifting away, beyond our grasp by this unconscious politics of body. Thus, our conscious politics, social commitments, strivings for change may be undermined and betrayed by the life of our bodies. Elanine Scarry warns that it is almost impossible to assess the myriad ways in which the nation -state “penetrates the deepest layers of consciousness, and manifest itself in the body itself.... The political identity of the body is usually learned unconsciously, effortlessly, and very early.”³

So, As the body is the prime site in performance and in the manifestation of politics, then the usage of that very body in performance to subvert the erstwhile dominating politics is all the more organically possible. Thus, to constitute or look for a universal model of political theatre in India, illuminates us about the notion of newly formed nation state influencing Piscatorial political theatre in India. But over time the notion of politics has already changed, and so are the goals and definition of politics and political theatre. Economic viability is no longer the understanding of politics. The broad framework of class division of the oppressed in the society no longer exist. Now it is always a group as a body among many bodies /groups and each one has its own politics.

So, while searching for those circumstances where the body is undeniable, Jeanie Forte zeroed down of two such situation. One is very obvious, that is performance more closely Theatre. And the other situation is of pain.⁴

On one hand you have the live performance baring the undeniablity of the body and the other situation is of the felt material existence of this corporeality. Artaud too talks about this notion of the body in performance in his Theatre and its Double.

Of course, in Indian context, the so called Agit-Prop plays that marked our politico-/people’s theatre during 70's and 80's too feeds up this notion of the pain. The lack of basic amenities for the body, Roti, Kapra and Makan ( Food, Clothing and Livelihood) leads one to the angst or the pain of portraying it in theatre. Earliest and the most potent example of this is IPTA’s Nabanna.²

Nabanna depicted the ruthless pain of the famine in its all possible noir shades, creating a dialogue between what has happened and what should be. Such a theatre that hopes for a social change would enable the people with that lack, gain equality out of it. But as I have pointed out earlier that the very notion of political has changed, and therefore, the Bhaktinian equation of the Centre-Margin is not just on the broad economic lines, as just economic crisis is not the heart of political moves now, it has multiplied as veins and cappilaries, creating this complex matrix of multiple marginalities. Starting from antropological marginalities of the tribes, through socio-cultural marginalities of religion, caste and of course nation to the very closed marginal space of that being a woman, gay etc and this many go on. So, this deluge of multiple marginalities would lose its apparently specific strength, if our parameter of studying them is just a broad economic equality, or at most an attempt on the political lines to club together many sub cultures to a dominant culture that would provide them with the tools to shirk off their marginality. Though this might seem to be a very illuminatory, it is just a theoretical possibility. The works of Nancy Fraser, Pierre Bourdieu⁵ and many other socio-political thinker, would lead one to understand and ultimately critic the above mentioned theoritical possibiltiy and almost negate it. In such a troubled time as ours, the only practical similarity across these marginalized communities, or subcultures is the pain of being on the margins or even beyond it. Thus, the proper portrayal of the pain in theatre can now be the locus of the power and politics.

Case studies on these portrayal of pain can be many, for example all the marginal communities that I have named earlier are visible as they have consciously rendered their pain visible to us. Thus, we see that pain is the ultimate expression towards the building of (to use Augusto Boal’s term) an aesthetics of the oppressed.

ALT’s activity is one such case study and a vital case study to begin with as here the focus is on body. Well, there are many more groups in Bengal that are doing political theatre or rather community theatre. But here in ALT it is a special act of concentrating on just the body and that becomes your text. As we have earlier pointed out that the two circumstance when the body is visible are on stage in performance and in pain. And further, though we have understood pain as a category to be quite universal though may be varying in its cause and effect, is another site of the visibility of body, but it comes in with a poison tooth of its own. Scarry referring to this poison tooth of pain, defines “ pain is that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed”, and as such, is always subject to doubt when claimed by someone other than oneself. It shows a persistent resistence to language, in fact actively destroying language, in that it reduces its subject to a state of anterior to language and this is essential to what pain is. Nevertheless, the language of pain is first and foremost an attempt to communicate to the person who is not in pain, in order to move them into action; “verbally expressing pain is a necessary prelude to the collective task of diminishing pain,”. At this point, doesn’t the earlier statement sound striking similar to what people’s theatre or community theatre in our times seek to do. They(theatre) try and build consciousness again, in order to move them into action. Well, I believe it is theatre on one level even for Amnesty International, when they perform through their firsthand account of torture, pain in their posters. The purpose of which is to get the reader to identify with the tortured, to be moved to end that suffering, as if it were her or his own.

Thus, now we have a more concrete entry point, that might lead us to develop a proper methodology into that realm of theatre or the so called people’s theatre that has been quite dominant across the vast Indian theatrical landscape, where distinct genres of theatre is produced by distinct marginalised groups, portraying their own pain with a force that has its vector.

Let that entry point be Guha, who felt the need of exploring this expressive physical language of theatre that depicts this pain, but not at the cost of the message or the ideology that propels him and many others to do theatre. On the other hand it is leading us to develop an aesthetics of people’s theatre in our times. ALT felt the need of developing an alternative language that would be more organic and be universal and on the other hand save theatre from the paralyzing influence of the language based verbal theatre that of course has social cause but tends to be didactic and further more is limiting and limited as it cannot cross the language barrier. One more stake is to initiate the audience to get involved in it, and start thinking, questioning it and not just be a mute observer. Of course, We see these all happening when we depict the pain in performance as Jill Dolan would suggest that moments of liminal clarity and communion, fleeting, briefly transcendent bits of profound human feeling and connection, spring from alchemy between performers and spectators and their mutual confrontation with a historical present that lets them imagine a different, putatively better future.⁶

Thus, ALT’s productions AMMA: a play based on the fragments of woman issue across the globe, Tritiya Yuddha : an anthropo- socio- economic interpretation of the rupturous phenomenon of globalization. And finally Victimised: a response to the on going act of terror, gloomy ghost of partition still looming large in our hearts are few representative example of this kind of theatre, that speaks the language of pain. More particularly, in Victimised, when in the final scene, an actor playing the role of a victimised, an oppressed, starts pouring burning-melting candle on his body, it is a real ‘moment’ where all boundaries blur. The pain being performed, felt and imagined at different levels, definitely creates a connection like never before between the actors, performance and the spectators. This image stays long after you have left the performance space and is the true strength of the performance.

This subtle understanding of shock at the final moments of the play also refines politics as a very organic concept, not a didactic propaganda, but something which is dynamic and is dialectical, as everybody would have a different response to the shock. Thus, Alternative Living Theatre as a movement or a moment in history illuminates our understanding of the delicate dialectics marked between 1950's Agit -prop political theatre and the organic nature of politics emerging as a dialogue between power and powerless nowadays. This will definitely help us to develop a tangible aesthetics in this intangible domain of theatre that lives on the vision of bringing about a social change or at least lead the “witness” to engage in the organic act of thinking, liberating them from their passivity, and inspire them to be in direct contact with the actors, and the issues in concern. The movement for a strong Alternative Living Theatre will grow in the future that would definitely bring in many new perspectives, and of course more true, and apt models to extend the frontiers of performance.

Notes:-

1 Probir Guha,- A student of Jerzy Grotowski, he opened Living Theatre in Khardah, a small town near Kolkata, in 1977. Later formed the Alternative Living Theatre. He is a recipient of Prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, 2008 for Direction

2 Nabanna staged on 24^th October, 1943, by IPTA at Kolkata

1. The Hindu, Friday Review Delhi, dated- Friday, Feb 09, 2007

²

Susan R. Bordo, “The Body and the reproduction of Femininity: A feminist Appropriation of Foucault,” in Jaggar and Bordo, Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstruction of Being and Knowing, ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 13

3.Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 109

4.Jeanie Forte, “Focus on the body: Pain, Praxis, and Pleasure in Feminist Performance” in Critical Theory and Perfromance, ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach ( Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1992)

5Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu, (Mis) recognition, Soical Inequality and Social Justice, ed. Terry Lovell, (Routledge, 2007)

6 Jill Dolan, Utopia in Performance, Finding Hope at the Theater, (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2005.) Page-168

Theatre of Probir Guha

1Expressions/‘pure’ physicality: Alternative Language of Theatre (ALT in Bengal)

Benil Biswas

“This is a theatre that prides itself in violating conventions of dramatic art. It does not use any language, any written script or any accessories, moving the dramatic action from the proscenium stage to the open lawns, enacting images of oppression and plight of the victimised sinking deeper in their misery and degradation.”, comments Diwan Singh Bajeli, noted theatre critic¹ after seeing a show by the Alternative Living Theatre.

The plays doesn’t have any written script and uses no spoken language than the question arises what is the medium of communication.... here it is the body, body is used in a very “political” sense, and to bare it all to us, as if to urge us to rethink not just “how” of theatre, but also the “what” of theatre.

Every body- Every body is political; and it speaks: through our physical expressions, our gestures and mimic, our body tells stories about our background, about what mood we are in, about what we would like people around us to do, etc. Our decoding or reading of body language has been shaped throughout our lives by the culture we live in. Without thinking, we perceive or interpret certain gestures in a certain way. To cut it short, as Susan Bordo so succinctly puts it; “the body ... is a medium of culture”.²

Of course, in modern theatre like a resurrection of the phoenix, this notion of culture specificity resurrected a few decades ago, giving birth to new mode and languages of theatre and worthy sons of theatre like Bhanu Bharti's "Pashu Gayatri", Ratan Thiyan's "Chakravyuh", Prasanna's "Huliya Neralu" and Bansi Kaul's "Khel Guru Ka", whose production ware considered to be landmark in contemporary Indian Theatre. Guha's¹

“Ahalya” -a unique theatrical experiment with the body came to national attention when he shared the stage with the above mentioned doyens on the lawns of the Sangeet Natak Akademi way back in 1984 at the Natya Samaroh.

As in India, the physical theatre or the dominance of a strict code of the body was quite a feature of the classical- folk- traditional theatre, so these directors found the need and sites of practice of this pure physical theatre in our modern theatrical domain, and in the process found out elements of the traditional performances from the past rejuvenated in our times, liberating it in both the sense. Liberating modern theatre as it breaks free from already fixed expressions, stale verbality and creating new; ways of expressions, and on the other hand introducing the new generation to the traditional performances, where they could connect themselves with their own past.

Of course, this ritual and cultural representation alone in its form, divorced from the relationship to the practical entity of the body is a limiting one. Infact, the body has to go through the transformation in the social order, on the contrary we just tend to understand it in terms of culture. We don’t understand that it is the body that is conditioned by the routine table manners, toilet, and other civic amenities, is slowly drifting away, beyond our grasp by this unconscious politics of body. Thus, our conscious politics, social commitments, strivings for change may be undermined and betrayed by the life of our bodies. Elanine Scarry warns that it is almost impossible to assess the myriad ways in which the nation -state “penetrates the deepest layers of consciousness, and manifest itself in the body itself.... The political identity of the body is usually learned unconsciously, effortlessly, and very early.”³

So, As the body is the prime site in performance and in the manifestation of politics, then the usage of that very body in performance to subvert the erstwhile dominating politics is all the more organically possible. Thus, to constitute or look for a universal model of political theatre in India, illuminates us about the notion of newly formed nation state influencing Piscatorial political theatre in India. But over time the notion of politics has already changed, and so are the goals and definition of politics and political theatre. Economic viability is no longer the understanding of politics. The broad framework of class division of the oppressed in the society no longer exist. Now it is always a group as a body among many bodies /groups and each one has its own politics.

So, while searching for those circumstances where the body is undeniable, Jeanie Forte zeroed down of two such situation. One is very obvious, that is performance more closely Theatre. And the other situation is of pain.⁴

On one hand you have the live performance baring the undeniablity of the body and the other situation is of the felt material existence of this corporeality. Artaud too talks about this notion of the body in performance in his Theatre and its Double.

Of course, in Indian context, the so called Agit-Prop plays that marked our politico-/people’s theatre during 70's and 80's too feeds up this notion of the pain. The lack of basic amenities for the body, Roti, Kapra and Makan ( Food, Clothing and Livelihood) leads one to the angst or the pain of portraying it in theatre. Earliest and the most potent example of this is IPTA’s Nabanna.²

Nabanna depicted the ruthless pain of the famine in its all possible noir shades, creating a dialogue between what has happened and what should be. Such a theatre that hopes for a social change would enable the people with that lack, gain equality out of it. But as I have pointed out earlier that the very notion of political has changed, and therefore, the Bhaktinian equation of the Centre-Margin is not just on the broad economic lines, as just economic crisis is not the heart of political moves now, it has multiplied as veins and cappilaries, creating this complex matrix of multiple marginalities. Starting from antropological marginalities of the tribes, through socio-cultural marginalities of religion, caste and of course nation to the very closed marginal space of that being a woman, gay etc and this many go on. So, this deluge of multiple marginalities would lose its apparently specific strength, if our parameter of studying them is just a broad economic equality, or at most an attempt on the political lines to club together many sub cultures to a dominant culture that would provide them with the tools to shirk off their marginality. Though this might seem to be a very illuminatory, it is just a theoretical possibility. The works of Nancy Fraser, Pierre Bourdieu⁵ and many other socio-political thinker, would lead one to understand and ultimately critic the above mentioned theoritical possibiltiy and almost negate it. In such a troubled time as ours, the only practical similarity across these marginalized communities, or subcultures is the pain of being on the margins or even beyond it. Thus, the proper portrayal of the pain in theatre can now be the locus of the power and politics.

Case studies on these portrayal of pain can be many, for example all the marginal communities that I have named earlier are visible as they have consciously rendered their pain visible to us. Thus, we see that pain is the ultimate expression towards the building of (to use Augusto Boal’s term) an aesthetics of the oppressed.

ALT’s activity is one such case study and a vital case study to begin with as here the focus is on body. Well, there are many more groups in Bengal that are doing political theatre or rather community theatre. But here in ALT it is a special act of concentrating on just the body and that becomes your text. As we have earlier pointed out that the two circumstance when the body is visible are on stage in performance and in pain. And further, though we have understood pain as a category to be quite universal though may be varying in its cause and effect, is another site of the visibility of body, but it comes in with a poison tooth of its own. Scarry referring to this poison tooth of pain, defines “ pain is that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed”, and as such, is always subject to doubt when claimed by someone other than oneself. It shows a persistent resistence to language, in fact actively destroying language, in that it reduces its subject to a state of anterior to language and this is essential to what pain is. Nevertheless, the language of pain is first and foremost an attempt to communicate to the person who is not in pain, in order to move them into action; “verbally expressing pain is a necessary prelude to the collective task of diminishing pain,”. At this point, doesn’t the earlier statement sound striking similar to what people’s theatre or community theatre in our times seek to do. They(theatre) try and build consciousness again, in order to move them into action. Well, I believe it is theatre on one level even for Amnesty International, when they perform through their firsthand account of torture, pain in their posters. The purpose of which is to get the reader to identify with the tortured, to be moved to end that suffering, as if it were her or his own.

Thus, now we have a more concrete entry point, that might lead us to develop a proper methodology into that realm of theatre or the so called people’s theatre that has been quite dominant across the vast Indian theatrical landscape, where distinct genres of theatre is produced by distinct marginalised groups, portraying their own pain with a force that has its vector.

Let that entry point be Guha, who felt the need of exploring this expressive physical language of theatre that depicts this pain, but not at the cost of the message or the ideology that propels him and many others to do theatre. On the other hand it is leading us to develop an aesthetics of people’s theatre in our times. ALT felt the need of developing an alternative language that would be more organic and be universal and on the other hand save theatre from the paralyzing influence of the language based verbal theatre that of course has social cause but tends to be didactic and further more is limiting and limited as it cannot cross the language barrier. One more stake is to initiate the audience to get involved in it, and start thinking, questioning it and not just be a mute observer. Of course, We see these all happening when we depict the pain in performance as Jill Dolan would suggest that moments of liminal clarity and communion, fleeting, briefly transcendent bits of profound human feeling and connection, spring from alchemy between performers and spectators and their mutual confrontation with a historical present that lets them imagine a different, putatively better future.⁶

Thus, ALT’s productions AMMA: a play based on the fragments of woman issue across the globe, Tritiya Yuddha : an anthropo- socio- economic interpretation of the rupturous phenomenon of globalization. And finally Victimised: a response to the on going act of terror, gloomy ghost of partition still looming large in our hearts are few representative example of this kind of theatre, that speaks the language of pain. More particularly, in Victimised, when in the final scene, an actor playing the role of a victimised, an oppressed, starts pouring burning-melting candle on his body, it is a real ‘moment’ where all boundaries blur. The pain being performed, felt and imagined at different levels, definitely creates a connection like never before between the actors, performance and the spectators. This image stays long after you have left the performance space and is the true strength of the performance.

This subtle understanding of shock at the final moments of the play also refines politics as a very organic concept, not a didactic propaganda, but something which is dynamic and is dialectical, as everybody would have a different response to the shock. Thus, Alternative Living Theatre as a movement or a moment in history illuminates our understanding of the delicate dialectics marked between 1950's Agit -prop political theatre and the organic nature of politics emerging as a dialogue between power and powerless nowadays. This will definitely help us to develop a tangible aesthetics in this intangible domain of theatre that lives on the vision of bringing about a social change or at least lead the “witness” to engage in the organic act of thinking, liberating them from their passivity, and inspire them to be in direct contact with the actors, and the issues in concern. The movement for a strong Alternative Living Theatre will grow in the future that would definitely bring in many new perspectives, and of course more true, and apt models to extend the frontiers of performance.

Notes:-

1 Probir Guha,- A student of Jerzy Grotowski, he opened Living Theatre in Khardah, a small town near Kolkata, in 1977. Later formed the Alternative Living Theatre. He is a recipient of Prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, 2008 for Direction

2 Nabanna staged on 24^th October, 1943, by IPTA at Kolkata

1. The Hindu, Friday Review Delhi, dated- Friday, Feb 09, 2007

²

Susan R. Bordo, “The Body and the reproduction of Femininity: A feminist Appropriation of Foucault,” in Jaggar and Bordo, Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstruction of Being and Knowing, ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 13

3.Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 109

4.Jeanie Forte, “Focus on the body: Pain, Praxis, and Pleasure in Feminist Performance” in Critical Theory and Perfromance, ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach ( Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1992)

5Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu, (Mis) recognition, Soical Inequality and Social Justice, ed. Terry Lovell, (Routledge, 2007)

6 Jill Dolan, Utopia in Performance, Finding Hope at the Theater, (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2005.) Page-168

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

National Award

Probir Guha gets National Award....

I am extremely happy to share the news that our friend Probir Guha from Kolkota (Artistic Director of Alternative Living Theatre) has been awarded with Sangeeth Natak Akademy award for theatre this year.
Probir is a long term friend of Lokadharmi and has visited our group many times to do workshops, to exchange ideas and collaborate. Also he had come with his productions of Kalo Basti, Ahalya, and Waves of Darkness way back in 1996, and again with Tridiya Yudha in January 2008.
He may be collaborating with Lokadharmi in a production of Oorubhangam in the near future; we have been communicating about this for the last one year.
And Probir is coming to Kochi as the Director of a 21 days workshop with selected actors from the district. The workshop starts from January 23rd. This workshop is part of Natakakalam, a project of District library Council and C-hed of Corporation of Kochi.
We are extremely happy and proud of you Probir...
Lokadharmi is organizing a reception to honor Probir on the eve of 28th of January at Changampuzha Park, Edappally, where we will screen the video of one of his important productions.
We welcome everyone to join this event to congratulate Probir. He is one among us...
Know the man from his words
Here are some of the quotes from Probir which he keeps on saying. His words will speak about him and his theatre.
Probir Guha says
· "Imperialism has been adopting the same old tactics of divide and rule. This is exactly what is happening in Iraq. The American occupation forces are unabashedly capturing oil resources, ravaging the culture of the people, destroying their liberty."
· "My experiences and experiments have resulted in the extension of Living Theatre to a new concept called Journey Theatre, which provides actors more opportunity to establish direct contact with the spectators."
· "I have learnt from my own tradition, recreating it for modern times. Theatre is very much region specific and culture specific. What I learnt from Grotowski is his devotion and commitment to the theatre which is free from illusory devices and which captures life in an authentic manner. His use of the human body has also influenced me. The body movements are not acrobatics but these are spiritual incarnations of the performers."
· "In terms of theatre philosophy we (Probir and Badal Sircar) appear to be similar, but in approach we are different. His theatre is limited to the urban educated audience. I do theatre for the common man in villages as well as for the city people. My approach is not rigid as far as presentational style is concerned. Sometimes I stage on pavements, roadsides, streets, rooftops, and sometimes I use intimate theatre and proscenium - I use all these areas as space. I love to explore spaces."
· "Schchner uses a conceptualised theatre, he designs the space. In contrast, my theatre space is improvised. I use nature as it is."
· "Alternative Living Theatre is not the name of a group, it is a movement. It will grow as people become conscious of their right to use theatre as a medium of self-expression. It has nothing to do with economic viability. It liberates spectators from their passivity, inspiring them to be in direct contact with the actors. The movement for a strong Alternative Living Theatre will grow in the future."
· "Our own indigenous culture is beautiful and if we have to fight globalisation it has to be with the power of our own tradition,"
· "It is a social duty for me and I have seen the changes that have come through it. We are searching for a way to inspire spectators to get up and react and act. I do not go for a storyline because that has its own pressures. The idea is my hero, not the character playing the part."
· "I was a political activist but got disillusioned with political parties and thought theatre might be another medium to make a difference with."
· Theatre is a journey, it is storytelling. It is a real secular space that cannot lie. It is truth from your perspective.”
· “mere sloganeering will not help, it has to be artistic.”
· “I exercise caution in my use of words because word carries power and each word creates a response in our bodies
· “When they (the new artists to ALT) come they are free to interact, question, and learn. Some do leave but the ones that stay on help take ALT forward. We are like an extended family. We all know to starve and survive on a frugal meal. Each one of us knows poverty, so coping with lean periods is no problem at all”
· “Theatre has to be intimate. It may not bring a revolution by itself, but it certainly is a rehearsal for revolution.”
The words of Probir quoted extensively above clearly speak about the theatre of Probir- his priorities, approaches and concerns. After the illustrious start Probir had also undergone through a very gloomy and sad phase where his theatre was almost in a standstill and lost in dilemma. As many other artists funded by Ford foundation, Probir was also adrift in the crossroads, deserted and alone. This sad phase made me and many other people question about the hidden agendas and the political implications of external funds.
The theatre of Probir was intense and sharply political for the imperial agencies could stand and promote. Anyway this is not the time to discuss about the pleasures and perils of funding, but I want to say that Probir had overcome the bad patch and was able to recoup and rebuild his theatre, almost starting from the scratch.
And in this second coming Probir did not loose his political ideology nor dilute his vision about the form, content, methodology, working ethics, aesthetics, ideology and the essence of theatre. I had seen him working harder with a clearer perspective in this phase of theatre.
In the first phase his theatre was more violent and rustic. In the funded period he had the chance to study the various martial arts and traditional forms of the country more closelors. This gives a further ambience of authenticity, and a root into the culture of the land and this accent further the political angle of his plays.
And I wish Probir goes ahead with his theatre, stronger, clearer, brighter and upright with candid perspective and commitment, typical of him.
With this Sangeeth Natak Akademy award Probir joins the bandwagon of the illustrious theatre directors from Bengal including Sombhu Mitra, Shyamanand Jalan, Ajitesh Bandopadhyay, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Tarun Roy, Usha Ganguly, and Arun Mukherjee.
Posted by Chandradasan at Tuesday, January 13, 2009 0 comments y and also was able to train the actors in these respects. To the earlier physical format that might have been in lineage to Grotowski, Probir could definitely add the flavor of many Indian traditional forms like Chou, Kalaripayattu to the repertory of the art and craft of his actLabels: Lokadharmi, Probir Guha