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| ARTS TRIBUNE | Friday, August 11, 2000, Chandigarh, India |
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‘Quality programmes needed’ |
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Serving theatre with commitment Punjabi theatre is at the crossroads today. There is a lull in writing as well as in performance. There may be manifold reasons for playwrights not giving new scripts, but there seems to be only one (main) for non-performance and that is lack of infrastructure i.e. playhouse. In Punjab it is only Chandigarh which is having a proper play house in the form of Tagore Theatre which is providing some continuity to theatre with only one hurdle — the high cost of hiring. When a team wishes to rehearse a play on the sets in an auditorium, it is not possible because of the cost factor. Even at Tagore Theatre, Chandigarh, only government teams can do it as the hall is available to them free of cost. But at Punjab Naat Shala, Amritsar, you can rehearse on the stage with all sets for three to four days or even more, subject to availability. Can any government give its public such a playhouse? No. The Punjab Naat Shala (PNS) is the labour of love of one individual, Jatinder Singh Brar. He is an industrialist of the city and a playwright in his own right. He has given several plays like “Faasle”, “Lohe di Bhatthi” etc and also acted in dramas during his college days. Jatinder is a combination of an artiste playwright and engineer. And when all three work together, he creates special and unique facilities for theatre. In Punjab, Ludhiana can boast of its Punjabi Bhavan, but that is more suited to cultural melas than theatre. Amritsar has Guru Nanak Bhavan which caters more to fashion shows and political gatherings. However, sometimes one can see religious plays on the stage because sponsors of such plays are rich enough to pay for the hall and the extra-sound system. Sometime back, Dr Atamjit, a renowned playwright and director, visited Canada. He summed up the difference between the Canadian Punjabi theatre and Punjab’s Punjabi theatre saying: “In Canada, the viewer of theatre pays for it, while in Punjab he does not”. The government never patronises theatre. In the past the government in Punjab patronised theatre only for the limited purpose of creating awareness of brotherhood in the troubled state. In other words, it tried to use theatre in the field where it had failed. But it did not care to provide a good playhouse to theatre. It is the existence of quality playhouse which stimulates the continuity of any theatre. Punjab is a poor state in this respect. Amritsar, which was at the top on the map of theatre continuity before the onset of the Punjab problem, is once again becoming a centre of theatre activity. Though the Balraj Sahni open-air theatre near the Gandhi grounds is no longer existing, it is the emergence of the Punjab Naat Shala, opposite Khalsa College, which is acting as a catalyst for the theatre activity. The PNS was inaugurated on the World Theatre Day in 1998. It has seen 40 theatre performances in the first five months of the year 2000. No small achievement this. The PNS is an open-air theatre. The stage is 60’x60’ in area with trees in the background. It has its own light and sound system equipped with electronic dimmers. It has an audience capacity for 125 to 150, which can be further increased by removing the chairs. The green rooms for the artistes are air-conditioned and well maintained. No theatre in the northern India can boast of having 10’x4’ wings and 3’x6’ tables with varying heights (adjustable) with which sets can be made. Not only the infrastructure, manpower is also available to assist the team in the erection of the sets. The roof has an iron cage which can be covered and uncovered within 10 to15 minutes in case of need. The generator starts working within two minutes of power failure. Now Jatinder plans to have a rotating stage so that the performer can use two sets at a time. All this seems like a fantasy to those theatre workers who have been toiling all these years. The PNS is certainly a refreshing change for any performer. In the summer season when mosquitoes are a menace, it is a pleasant surprise to visit the PNS as Jatinder has made it mosquito-free. There are 50 hidden mosquito-repellent mats working in the auditorium at a time and neither the artiste nor the audience is troubled by the mosquitoes. No open-air theatre in the country provides this much in terms of facilities and ambience. Governments do not seem to be able to create and maintain such facilities. Therefore, it is a challenge to groups and theatre lovers to set up good playhouses at other centres. There are some groups which have been working for 20 to 25 years and even have their own land/theatre like Mahashakti Kala Mandir, Barnala, and another group at Pathankot. Both groups organise annual theatre festivals which can be the envy for any cultural department. The expertise of Jatinder and dedication of these groups, if put together, can create new facilities conducive for the growth of theatre and some new nodal centers for theatre can grow. However, governments’ support to such ventures from outside would be welcome. |
Sight &
Sound When I first started travelling abroad, it was All India Radio. I eagerly used my powerful transistor radio to catch programmes from home. Complete failure. I asked the Press and cultural people at our embassies. And the answer was the same. Odd timings (too much to expect a Frenchman to get up at 7.30 am to listen to AIR when his own radio was giving exciting wake-up programmes). As for Indians in important target areas like the USA and Canada, well those countries were beyond the reach of AIR. But at least the External Services had artistes of the calibre of Saeed and Madhur Jaffrey. Aftab and Roshen Seth. And strange though it
seems, AIR did get fan mail from unexpected sources. There was the listener in Japan who begged AIR not to change the timings of its filmi geet programme as he could not go to sleep without it. More recently, AIR Shillong reported how its North-East Service, which could not be heard in Guwahati, let alone Shillong, had been picked up in Latin America in fact, AIR’s popularity abroad has been more through freak reception or for love of
music. Classical in Europe and filmi pop in Latin America and Japan. And such NRIs who actually got AIR sat up entirely for filmi music or news from home. But with the advent of satellite TV and the Indian cinema boom abroad, and not least of all due to internet, Indians abroad at least fare better now. And now, with much fanfare, DD has stepped up its international service. Not that one can see it in India, so one cannot comment on its quality. But about two years ago, we could see DD’s international service in India and did not feel particularly elated to see DD I’s morning programme, complete with sub-standard newscasters, being repeated as international fare. On the other hand, we can see Sony, Star and Zee clearly in India, one is told about the number of countries they reach and has a fair idea of what viewers abroad are getting. One service of AIR which started quietly and with the best of culture and propaganda only in news and current affairs, was its Urdu Service, which captured the imagination of listeners across the border. And now Eenadu has started an Urdu Service, planned by Shama Zaidi. My cable operator refuses to give it, as he refuses most interesting channels, so I cannot comment on it. But one of my colleagues says it is quite good. I would have loved to see its tributes to Ali Sardar Jafri, which both Zee and Star covered adequately, but I wish an Urdu expert had covered it in Limelight. There are so many of them who did for the print medium. But reverting to DD’s International Service, one can only hope it has laid some stress on quality . For instance, if its English bulletins are being read by those disastrous Hindi girls who are reading the midnight news on DD News and DDI, I can only report that as a student of English language and literature, I cannot follow a single word of what they
say. And I am an Indian. Foreigners would have difficulty recognising it as English. And DD international has even more competition outside India. What with Kashmir, Veerappan and Fiji, disaster news continues to dominate the screen. Srinivasan Jain back in Sri Lanka and Maya Mirchandani from Sierra Leone stand in for Star News. Zee is also spreading itself wide. It has had exclusive despatches from Sierra Leone, where Saeed Naqvi was the earliest seasoned professional and Sawant of The Indian Express has also done us proud in the print medium. But since then press parties flown there by the MEA are paying rich dividends from the area, well-timed for Parliament. Zee also had exclusive despatches from a local radio newsman in Fiji. But the quality of its despatches need a lot of improvement. In its eagerness Zee News frequently goes overboard. Its two anchors were positively rude to national anthem producer Bala and asked some pretty silly questions as well. I also watched its World Report, which attempted to cover the whole world and all, of course, with footage from other agencies. It was really not possible to take in all those quick-jumping items. And I wish the anchor had not put on a nondescript suit for the occasion when Zee’s girls are so elegantly Indian in their saris. |
Art &
Culture Moments are like dew drops, shimmering in the light of time. Try reliving them and they get stuck to you like one when plucked from a blade of grass. Each human life has enjoyed the glory of ‘moments’ at some stage of their existence, whether consciously or sub-consciously. These unidentifiable acquisitions within each individual may at a given point of time result in an absolute revolution of an entire being i.e. mind, body and soul. Experimentation with self in terms of questioning one’s identity; attempting to solve the uncertainties that lie dormant in perhaps every individual’s mind/sub-conscious; a desperate bid to rid oneself of the self-generated guilt consequents itself towards a drastic change. It is said, people change you. How, when and why appear to be mysteries in this context. It is probably the influence of these other lives or at times only one, that makes you ponder and hence the need to ask becomes necessary. It is at such moments that one’s conditioned past begins to interfere with the occurrence of today. And what follows then? Well, just about everything and anything that a human mind, body and soul can possibly endure! To quote a free thinker: “The art of living is far more important than the art of the great painters.” After all it is not and therefore, must not be confined to merely a type of alternate thinking alone. Living is an art and there are those who realise it and make life worth living, while there are those who entrap themselves in its existentialist angst, thereby treating the exercise of living a routine affair. As someone
reminisces, “Living is to die, to die everyday to everything that you have fought with and gathered, the self-importance, the self-pity, the sorrow, the pleasure and the agony of this thing called living”. The rights and wrongs of human situations sometimes get drowned in their own ineffable silences. What surfaces then are those rare moments of our lives when an individual appeared to be a mirror reflecting the starkest of self image possible by just being what he or she was. Preconceived notions about one’s own being fall through the moment such a reality hits you in the face. Such initiations remain inconclusive forever and yet they leave impressions that last till you die. |
‘Quality programmes needed’ THE art of scripting books, television programmes and films for children should be in consonance with their psychology, according to noted film director and lyricist Gulzar. Gulzar said, “Our system lacks focus on quality-based children’s films, books and entertainment programmes,” Besides, children’s programmes has not gained much ground in the entertainment arena as they were not commercially viable, he said while speaking at the regional workshop on International Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB) in Bhopal recently. The four-day workshop, organised by Prasar Bharati and UNICEF, was attended by senior officials and programme executives from the regional centres of All India Radio and Doordarshan. Gulzar lamented, “There is a dearth of children’s programmes in the country. Also, most children programmes were dubbed and it is difficult to find sponsors for such programmes.” The noted film director said children must enjoy what they listened, watched or read. Therefore, it was necessary to communicate with them as much as possible to understand their psychology, he said. Gulzar, who has written several books and songs on children, said the requirements of the children of the modern age were different from the past. Yesteryear’s noted film actress and puppeteer Kamini Kaushal said that the broadcasters’ endeavour should be “pace and innovation” while dealing with children. Besides presenting message-based programmes, the target should be to cover all age groups, she said. Ms Kaushal, who has been associated with All India Radio right from her childhood, appreciated the efforts of Prasar Bharati and UNICEF in holding the workshop to collect explicit views of children on their likes and aversion regarding different radio and television programmes. In the opening session, Kamini Kaushal’s film “Maa Main Bada Ho Gaya” was screened. Commenting on the objective of the workshop, UNICEF’s Usha Purie said it was aimed at collecting first-hand knowledge about what children liked or disliked while they watched TV or listened to the radio so that programmes of the public service broadcasting could be arranged in that manner. She said the suggestions that were emerging included special audience package, multifarious packaging and use of colloquial and conversational language in children-based programmes. The workshop was the second in the series of the four for public service broadcasters ahead of the International Children’s Day to be celebrated on December 10. —
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