Asia gets its act together

Visualised as an annual national theatre festival, Bharangam, held in New Delhi, last month had an international resonance and the array of plays was techno-savvy. A report by Chaman Ahuja

IN 1999, when Bharat Rang Mahotsava was started at NSD as an annual national theatre festival, a hope was in the air that soon it might graduate into an international event and claim a seat beside the festivals of Edinburgh, London, Avignon, etc. That hasn’t happened yet, but international flavour gets added every year via a few foreign plays — courtesy, the ICCR or foreign cultural missions in India. So far, Germany, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Mauritius have performed more than once, the other participants being Japan, Thailand, Tunisia, Greece, Iran, Israel, South Africa, South Korea, and Singapore. Understandably, this foreign fare is invariably impressive but rarely outstanding.

In Bharangam VII, held this year in January, in addition to plays from Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, there was a multinational project funded by Japan Foundation. Patay Khan from Lahore, written by Imran Peerzada and directed by Usman Peerzada, was perhaps the weakest of these productions. An entertainment-oriented performance, here was a sophisticated version of the Mirasi-tradition of folk theatre, suffused with colour, music, songs, Bhangra, acrobatics, satire, banter, slapstick business, glittering costumes. Although a play about a revolt against a king and feudal lords, the real focus remained on the pretensions of Patay Khan and his ilk, so much so that the legendary revolutionary, Dulla Bhatti, figured in a most forgettable sequence. If this is the best in Punjabi theatre that Pakistan can offer, Punjabi theatre in India can afford to boast like Patay Khan!

On the other hand, The Lesson from Bangladesh could challenge the best in Calcutta. An elongated version of Ionesco’s masterpiece, it was presented by Centre for Asian Theatre, Dhaka. Mejrema Reuter, a Croatian director, had given the play an interpretation which made it all the more relevant in the Indian context. The professor is projected as a professional killer who exploits politics to cover his crimes. The superb acting of Kamaluddin Nilu as Professor received a matching technical support from Nasirul Haque Khokon as the lighting designer.

Khuma from Nepal also looked equally relevant in India because it underlined the different ways the people become victims of insurgency. Mahesh Bikram Singh, an intelligence officer, wrote a story based on his experiences in the Maoist-infested rural areas where hundreds of people had just disappeared. That story was dramatised by Anup Baral, the director. When a Maoist is killed, his wife dies of heart attack, one son escapes to India and the other joins the Maoists. The daughter, Khuma, wishing to lead a peaceful life as a teacher, refuses to go with the insurgents; the next day she is missing.

The audience keep wondering whether she escaped to India, joined the insurgents, or was killed by the Maoists or by the army. As Khuma’s innocent eyes portray the pain of all the Nepalese, she is projected as a myth. Hence a lot of ritualistic, choreographic and stylised movements.

The festival opened with The Memoirs of a Legend, a multimedia theatre collaboration of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka under the aegis of Japan Foundation. Five directors (Abhilash Pillai, Anup Baral, Azad Abul Kalam, Ibrahim Qureshi, Ruwanthie de Chickera) were brought together to collaborate in creating a piece inspired by The Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur), the big idea was to pave the ‘future path’ with regard to the theatre in South Asia. Since the directors were to collaborate as equals while maintaining their individuality, each of them chose some episodes from The Baburnama to build his ‘images’ which were eventually pieced together to comprise the production. The process involved a lot of debating, squabbling, compromises and frustration.

As it turned out, for the audiences, the experience was even more frustrating. It all appeared as an assortment of all kinds of video-clippings all over — here and there, up and down, big and small, same and different — to the accompaniment of narration, descriptions, movements, paintings, rituals, music. The novelty and diversity of approaches was at once fascinating, mystifying, even irritating. here was bombardment of information in the form of fragmented truths but in vain did the audience look for a key to the understanding of the ‘whole picture’.

The images did suggest a profound connection somewhere but, at the same time, they tended to push one another out before that connection could register. Was this bafflement deliberate, the end in itself? Or was all this an ‘imitation’ of surfing to cater to the new aesthetic sensibility of the post-modern TV viewers? Or could it be that the audience is not yet ready for this ‘theatre of tomorrow? If so, is this the kind of theatre that we may look forward to? And shall it really represent the Asian theatre?

In this age of high technology, theatre is bound to change while passing gradually through experimental phases. The importance of The Memo irs lies in its yielding a valuable lesson — that this at least is not the way to accommodate technology.

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