Sunday, January 20, 2002		Article

Using plays to forge bonds
Kunal Khurana

WHEN social activist and one-time cine actress Mita Vashisht (remember Mani Kaul’s Siddeshwari) was asked to conduct a theatre workshop for rescued commercial sex workers at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi, little was she prepared for what she saw.

The girls, mostly in their teens, came from far-flung places in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Nepal, and didn’t have a common language to communicate. Frightened and confused, they sat around huddled in small groups, refusing to interact with anybody. They had simply lost their voice.

"But the most amazing part was that they had no sense of their bodies," recalls Vashisht. "Many had been in the trade for six years and felt as though their bodies were defiled. So I wanted them to be aware of how beautiful their bodies were regardless of how they looked."

Vashisht devised some exercises that made the girls conscious of their bodies and more importantly, connect with their childhood. Before long the girls were performing cartwheels and back-flips with ease and grace.

"Theatre is the world’s oldest art," says the visiting professor of NSD. "I have been conducting theatre workshops for three years now, but this workshop has particularly reaffirmed my faith in what theatre can do. It’s wonderful to see its impact on these girls."

Vashisht is not alone in using theatre for promoting a cause. Many years ago, filmmaker Mira Nair’s theatre workshops with street children led to some of them starring in Salaam Bombay and eventually, the establishment of the Salaam Balak Trust.

Then there were activists like the late Safdar Hashmi who took theatre to the streets in order to mobilise industrial workers against exploitation. Street plays have also been held on AIDS awareness, the small family norm, environment protection, even homosexuality (On A Muggy Night in Mumbai).

More recently, Lilette Dubey produced and acted in a Mahesh Dattani play, Thirty Days in September that was commissioned by a social service organisation, Recovering and Healing from Incest (RAHI). The play deals with child sex abuse.

"The prime consideration for a play is that it should be great theatre," says Dubey. "But it becomes a more profound and exciting experience when it is rooted in a very real issue. Here, we are treading on very fine line between making a point and avoiding becoming a vehicle for a message."

The success of the play was obvious from the backstage feedback when members of the audience met the actors to share their experiences on surviving incest in their childhood. "It was very rewarding to connect with real victims, instead of the polite noises of friends and critics," relates Dubey.

"To me theatre is an art form, not social work," counters Vashisht. "But I can use my art to make a difference to the lives of others. Theatre can’t grow in isolation, it’s an art of the people. And when you do something that deeply connects you with other people, you can attain a different level of art altogether."

Clearly, it is this motivation that brought Stephen Hammer to India after conducting theatre workshops for children in Kenya, Pakistan and the West Bank. "Children all over the world respond to the same basic emotions," he explains. ‘Drama cuts across borders, not only geographical, but also cultural and class."

Hammer has been holding acting workshops in Mumbai with slum children and those from Bombay International School. He insists that the idea is not to turn them into actors, but to break their in-built inhibitions and bring their creativity to the force.

"By using minimum language, our theatre teaches them to master their emotions and express themselves," Hammer elaborates. "It is a very important experience, especially for slum children. Suddenly the more privileged kids they looked up to all along were admiring them."

Others like Raj Kumar and Asmita Waghmare, working away from the glare of mainstream media, have similar experiences to narrate in their encounters with street urchins. While the former, an actor, teaches akhada exercises with a danda, the latter is a dancer and conducts classes on bharatanatyam.

Their sole concern in life is to empower the meek. (MF)