Action words

There's plenty of performance, but not enough scholarship.

For a country which boasts the world’s first, most comprehensive treatise on the performing arts, Bharata’s Natyashastra, it is surprising that there is little serious literature in the field today. Performers have no time to conceptualise and put into words their own work, and for some reason there are not enough Indian scholars and critics putting contemporary practice into any larger cultural framework. I feel this particularly strongly about writing in Hindi, on theatre and other performing arts, but am not very sure about the situation in other languages. One always feels the need to have a forum or a permanent outlet where publications on performing arts are brought together to give us a better picture of the scene in the country as a whole.

 

A commendable initiative in this direction has been taken by the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Federation of Indian Publishers in putting together an exhibition of books and journals on performing arts, called “Performance and the Printed Word”. For the exhibition, SNA has invited other sister organisations like the Sahitya Akademi, National School of Drama, Centre for Cultural Resources and Training and zonal cultural centres, along with around 20 private publishers put together by FIP, to display their books on this subject. Currently on at Delhi’s Rabindra Bhawan, it is a small but well displayed exhibition and a pleasure for anyone interested in these arts, with material in different languages from different regions. For instance, it was a pleasure to chance upon a journal of performing arts, Sruti, from Chennai, that has continued long enough to bring out its 294th issue, and that too through private initiative. Similarly, one came across a theatre journal in Gujarati and a dance journal from Hyderabad, all of which are presently being partially supported by SNA, but not easily accessible to theatre scholars of other regions.

The section for private publishers included Abhinav, Rupa, Motilal Banarsidass and Aryan, to name a few. The books were largely concentrated on the classical and the traditional and many were in the coffee-table format. They have been very well brought out but most do not reflect serious scholarship or any clear conceptual framework. It is a pity that Hindi publishers like Rajkamal and Vani Prakashan, and English publishers like OUP and Seagull, were not included as they have brought out many serious titles in the last few years pertaining to contemporary theatre practice. There was a stall of the Hathras Sangeet Karyalaya which, apart from books on music, had an intriguing series: a collection of film songs along with their full notations, divided into different categories like classical, love songs, devotional songs, et cetera, all written by some PhD holder — to what end, one does not know. This, from a place which has not only a rich musical tradition but also a tradition of scholarship. One wonders why this private organisation or its books had been singled out for display in this exhibition.

However, this exhibition got its character from a variety of publications and materials relating to this field. There were the proceedings of the first seminar, valuable for any research on modern Indian theatre, held in the 1950s by SNA soon after its inception; There were monographs on eminent theatre personalities published on its golden jubilee. And there were music CDs and dance VCDs prepared from selections from SNA archives, featuring legendary artists... Similarly, the CCRT — an organisation which disseminates material for teaching the arts in schools — section had folios on dance and traditional theatre forms. It also had sets of slides to facilitate teaching of the art forms.

On the whole, it is great that such a beginning has been made and one hopes that this will not be a one-off event but will become a regular, better-organised feature, with greater representation from other languages. It would be great if SNA could gradually set up permanent bookshops for all books on performing arts in all the state capitals, as that in itself will facilitate a dialogue of sorts and encourage research and scholarship in the arts.