FOCUS
Street theatre in India

Theatre in India was informal in its tradition and took place in unconventional spaces like fields after a crop, or at the Village Square, where the villagers could assemble and watch the show. The sort of street theatre that is found now in the nook and corners of the country can be understood as the continuous of this tradition of people’s theatre - a continuation of the form and the technique in its simplicity, and in its suggestive constitution. Overt use of irony, wit, and dialogue, and also the occasional spurts of songs with simple choreographed movement suggests this. Actually, it is precise to call this, as street corner theatre, since this does not spread or cover an entire street, but is compressed to some corner of the street.

Traditional streetside performances were to cheer the audience and to entertain them. But this took a political turn in the 1940’s when an organization called IPTA (Indian Peoples Theatre Association) started to use this form to spread the message of nationalism and freedom struggle among the villagers. IPTA had had a glorious past, with musicians, writers, and actors like Pundit Ravi Shankar, Thoppil Bhasi from Kerala, Shambhu Mitra and Tripti Mitra from Bengal, Salil Chowdhary, and Balraj Sahni as members. Productions of IPTA discussed political ideas and happenings and were leaning clearly on the leftist ideology.

The play Nabanna (the new food grain) produced by the IPTA in October 1944, written by Bijan Bhattacharya in Bengali, was a landmark in Indian theatre history, and it spoke about poverty and the politics of famine and its relationship with the colonial rule. Theatre went to the people instead the people going to theatre in its truest sense

But after independence the movement deteriorated with conflicts on the ideology and the overt political stances, it took. Many creative artists including Shambhu Mitra and Habeeb Thanveer bid farewell to IPTA and continued to work and develop their own theater.

The form of street corner theatre found a new phase through the 1970’s during and after the turbulent days of internal emergency and censorship, over all media. Radical political movements and committed leftists started to use this medium effectively to stage their protest. The Malayalam play Nattugaddika (the native ritual) written by K.J.Baby and performed by the cultural wing of the extreme leftist group CPI (ML) along with the tribals, was another important venture.

From the early 1980’s, the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishat (KSSP), an organisation to spread the message of science and scientific thought among people, started an annual journey through each and every villages of Kerala with their street corner productions. I still remember a very powerful production (titled Cats or Miavooo, Miavoo?) on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, and against the Union carbide responsible for this catastrophe. (In the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, a rolling wind carried a poisonous gray cloud - Forty tons of toxic gases of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) - past the Union Carbide C plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh India. An estimated 8,000 or more people died (over three times the officially announced total), About 300,000 more would suffer agonizing injuries from the disastrous effects of the massive poisoning. No alarm ever sounded a warning and no evacuation plan was prepared. This is the Hiroshima of chemical industry.) This production accused the Union Carbide as the killer and asked the people to boycott the products of Union carbide and were successful in wiping off the Eveready cells from the purchase habit of the Keralite for many years to come. The performances of KSSP were instrumental in popularising theatre, and street theatre in particular, among villagers. They performed on open spaces with improvised scripts, with all the actors in uniform costume without make up, using very simple and suggestive properties, with no lighting effects (the shows are normally during day time), no public address systems, and with a narrative structure that used choric songs and choreography. They addressed specific problems that are faced by the populace and had a specific social intention based on an ideology. The literacy mission in the 1990’s and the peoples planning program of the late 1990’s used the format of street corner plays effectively. The performances became so popular that the KSSP performances were called to throughout India, and even traveled to the neighboring countries like Nepal

But lately, the performances of KSSP were repeating the same structure and techniques that popular appeal slowly started to decline. The ideological sharpness is also loosing and nothing unexpected is happening in content or in structure in the late productions.

In Delhi, another important group started functioning in 1978, called Jana Natya Manch (Janam that means the people). Their productions are also in the same structure and with leftist ideology. They performed for and by working class, students, youth; women, white collar employees, etc, and performed at factory gates, working class slums, schools and colleges, office complexes, residential areas and villages. They did not ticket their shows, but asked for donations from the audience gathered. Most of the productions are topical and were for special campaigns, but most dealt with the issues like the position of women, communalism, the education system, price rice, exploitation, corruption, etc. There was a specific play to ‘welcome’ Bill Clinton to India during his last visit, which spoke on the political implications of his visit to a third world country, and the neo-colonial process.

The group was lead by Safdar Hashmi (12 April 1954 – 2 January 1989), a versatile personality; a theoretician, actor, director, playwright, lyricist, and an organiser. On 01 January 1989 when he was performing a play Hallabol (say aloud) before a factory gate, he was brutally attacked by anti social elements patronized by the then ruling party. Eventually he died in a Delhi hospital the next day. Still the group is doing new productions and is going strong with the same vigor and intensity, lead by Moloyashree Hashmi,

It is interesting that almost all the groups that uses the form of street corner theatre are belonging to the leftist ideology and are Marxists.

PRODUCTIONS

'WOH BOL UTHI' (She says so), Hindi.

Jana Natya Manch premiered its new play, 'Woh Bol Uthi’ and it’s performed at various venues including the lawns of universities and educational institutions.

This 50-minute play in an open space is in the true tradition of the group, and narrates a series of three stories. In the first story, the protagonist is a 10-year old girl from a poor family, who is prevented from wearing the red ribbons that she has been given. The second story is about a middle-aged housewife from a traditional family in Delhi. She discovers that the man with whom the men in the family have fixed up her daughter's wedding is a corrupt, and in the face of tremendous pressure from the rest of the family, she steps in and breaks off the match. The third story is about a worker woman who demands that the factory where she works must have a separate toilet for women -- a demand that is sought to be trivialized by some of the men workers in the factory. The play attempts to bring out small acts of courage by very ordinary women who seem not to be exceptional in any way. The play is also more introspective rather than propagandist.

AVAN VEENDUM VARUNNU ADHAVA AA MANUSHYAN NEE THANNE
(He comes Again, Or That man is You)

Benny Joseph a final year B.F.A student designed and directed an interesting production at School of Drama Trichur, based on two important plays by late C.J.Thomas who is considered to be one of the most important playwrights of Malayalam. The two plays, Avan veendum varunnu (he comes again) Aa Manushyan Nee Thanne (that man is you) are considered to be the best of Malayalam drama literature, are fused together to create a stage version that runs as a comparative study on the playwright, in performance. The presence of war, lust, sex, victims, cheating, power, love and repentance etc runs through the two plays, even though they are set in different periods. The first one is about an army man coming from the border, blinded in war and his wife who cannot resist her husband’s friend while he is at war. The second one is about David and his love to Batseba. The performance had an air of Greek Tragedy and had a nice realistic set that takes the period to that of the Bible.

CHARUDATTAM (Julius Caesar adapted to the Kadhakali style).

Charudattam is the new addition to the Shakespeare plays that has been adapted to the Kadhakali style, after King Lear, The Tempest, Hamlet, etc. But this time the play Julius Caesar is ingeniously adapted into the cultural Indian context, and the characters are renamed keeping the plot in tact. This new Kadhakali, adapted, scripted, choreographed, and directed by Sadanam Harikumar has all the characteristics of a proper Kadhakali show. Familiar names and costuming like, Charudattan (Julius Caesar –yellow in the line of Balabhadra), Malathy (Calpurnia - Female), Keerthybhadran (Mark Antony), Jayasenan (Brutus - Green) Rudrakan (Cinna – knife), Pindarakan (Casca – a red beard) and Dandi (Cassius – in a novel chutti), added to the visual spectacle a variety and totality that is familiar in Kadhakali. The two-hour performance is structured in four scenes, written and rendered in carefully selected ragas following the plot structure of Shakespeare, at the same time brilliantly adapted to the form of Kadhakali.

SOORYA THEATRE FESTIVAL

Soorya started as a film society at Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala is now one of the most important cultural movements in India. They annually organise the biggest film festival of the country, besides the usual programs. As part of the festival, Soorya has been organising music and dance festivals in which the leading maestros from all over India perform. For the last three years, Soorya organizes a theatre festival along with. This years theatre festival had the Malayalam adaptation of the Tempest presented by Sopanam, translated and directed by Kavalam Narayana Panikker; a blend of the old and new, the western and the Indian with a thrust on the spectacle. Maramarayattam Nerampokku (permanent masquerade – a pastime) written and directed by P.Balachandran for Abhinaya Thiruvananthapuram is a structurally loose, post modern reading of the famous Kadhakali Nalacharitham; aimed to de-aesthetcise the elite form by the use of wit, parody and pun and to peal of the many masks of contemporary life.

There were two Tamil plays performed by Koothu-P-Pattrai, an experimental group from Chennai, both written by N.Muttuswami. The first one is titled England, directed by Anmol Vellani, ridiculing the post-independent Indian trends to imitate the colonial traits in terms of dress, behavior and attitudes. The second one is Thennaliraman, directed by J.Jayakumar and is about the legendary court jester and his aberrant adventures and escapes, narrated in an episodic structure.

School of Drama, Trichur presented two plays, Gandhi, scripted by K.Satchithanandan and directed by Ramachandran Mokeri, and Randu Anthya Rangangal; Randu Abhishekangalum (two death Scenes; and two coronations) directed by Ramesh Varma. The second one is an interesting juxtapositioning of two scenes from two different Sanskrit plays by Bhasa with an intention to reveal the politics of wars, defeats and installations of new (puppet) governments with the help and supervision of external superpowers.

Premalehkanam (love letter), by Tihai theatre directed by Samkutty Pattamkari based on the famous short story by late Vaikom Muhammad Basheer was also performed in the Soorya festival of theatre.

PERFORMANCES OF CLASSICAL DANCES

Last month the city of Kochi had rare and rich shows of South Indian classical dances, by the biggest names in the field performing. Deepthi Omcherri Bhalla performed Mohiniyattam on the occasion of the annual celebration of the cultural journal Kaladarpanam . V.P.Dhananjayan, Shanta Dhananjayan, and Krishnaveni Lakshman joined together to dance Bharathanatyam organised by Dharani the prime dance institute of Kerala. All these gurus thrilled the audience with their own personal improvisations and the show of mastery on the Performance and at the same time keeping the set rules of the respective forms in tact. But the performance of Veera Malai Kuravanchi by three Bharathanatyam Gurus Padma Subrahmaniam, Chitra Visveswaran, and Sudharani Raghupathi was different, experimental, and exhilarating.

REVIEW

VEERA MALAI KURAVANCHI. – A dance drama in Tamil

This 90-minute performance by the three masters used a text that is believed to be 2000 years old. The text was obtained from an old traditional Devadasi, and it tells the story of Kuravanchi a gypsy girl, the court dancer Rajamohini and her friend Surathavalli and their interesting interaction. Rajamohini in love with Subrahmanian the minister’s son is in dreams and pains while Surathavalli cajoles her. Then comes Kuravanchi, the gypsy, to take them for a ride with her ‘never mind’ air and finally reads the hand of Rajamohini to predict the marriage of the lovers in near future, receives the arms, rewards, and leaves.

The three did this dance drama in 1997 for the first time together, and performed for the India festival at Soviet Russia. The basic research and the direction of the show has been by Padma Subrahmanium and she has designed the show such that the three dancers perform the characters and at the same time be in their own individual dance styles. Padma performed Kuravanchi, while Chitra was Surathavalli. The three characters are portrayed in different dance styles. Sudharani performs the Rajamohini in the true traditional Bharathanatyam style of Thanjavoor, with slow, subtle, precise and subdued expressions. She was more conventional in her footwork and dance, and limited her to the situation to portray a royal and aristocratic woman in love.

Chitra Visveswaran was more vibrant, dynamic, and danced into the rhythm often interacting and communicating to the music with occasional exchanges, with her body movements. She released her hands and legs, from the restraints of the dance form and really enjoyed herself with the sudden swirls, jumps, poses, and more folksy movements, always playful, with an air of ease around with the spine moving in unison with the rest of the body. It was very pleasant to watch Chitra quite masterly improvise and experiment on the dance form with an upward chin and smiling with her eyes and face, daring to move backwards in circular curves; all not seen in Conventional form of Bharathanatyam.

Padma Subrahmanium was doing real folk dance as Kuravanchi and was in her usual self. She had a folksy costume and pearl ornaments. She was swinging and swaying her body, mighty and witty and danced all sort of karanas – physical movements- with shakes and liberated hip movements, shifting suddenly and arbitrarily, with unexpected spout of movements. She seemed to repeat her favorite comment that every possible body movement was permissible in classical dances and should always be so. She as usual used a lot of animal mime, where she is best in improvising and even trying the possessed state in dance, were more close to the masses, and more near the Lokadharmi  (realistic/popular) style and had more spine in her dance. Her approach was as if to declare the success of the folk over the classical. In the last palm reading sequence, she literally took off to take all the liberties and the audience burst into laughter watching a dance!

The narrative structure of the performance was also close to the folk, with question answer tradition, with sequences that declare literally the arrival of each character with a song like “vanthal Surathavalli…” (Here comes Surathavalli….), and with narrative sequences of the route and places of the arrival of Kuravanchi, etc.

The show was the best when the dancers were performing individually and formed a sort of Jugalbandhi of individual styles and approaches. And there was less movement and variety when the three of them danced together.

But finally it is the dance that matters and I would be more happier to see the three of them were mutually responding to each other’s movement, to evolve a choreography of physicalised poetry on stage.

© 2000 Chandradasan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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