This year’s National School of Drama festival will feature actors and themes not usually seen on the stage.
It is 8 am on a bleak and foggy winter day, and the National School of Drama (NSD) is already abuzz with activity. People are queuing at the ticket counters two hours before they open. Tickets for the 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav are to be sold today and no one wants to miss out on any of the 96 plays to be showcased this year. People who met in the queue last year call out to each other and get down to discussing their favourites.
One of the most awaited plays in the first phase of the festival happens to be Rakta Karabi, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s original text. Apart from a powerful script and modern context, the play stands out because it features amateur actors who happen to be visually impaired. This is the first time that the Bharat Rang Mahotsav is creating such a wide platform for non-actors to present their stories, their angst and their issues. “We have plays by the hearing-impaired, sex workers and dwarves as well. This is a great opportunity for newer people to claim the theatre space and talk about their issues,” says Amal Allana, chairperson, NSD.
Rakta Karabi is presented by Kolkata-based Shyambazar Anyadesh — a group theatre for the sightless. “The play essentially shows a conflict between modern civilisation and nature. The blindness of the 44 actors is being taken as a metaphor for the blindness of the modern consumerist society towards nature,” says Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, director of the play.
Then there is Kino Kao from Assam, which features 23 dwarves in the age group of 5 to 65 years. Director Pabitra Rabha was so moved by the plight of this community that he decided to do a play with them. “If you keep height aside, what is it that differentiates them from you and I? They are just as bright, artistic and hardworking as the rest of us. They share our dreams and aspirations. Yet we have always ignored them.” Rabha is now planning a village for them in Tangla, Assam, where the dwarves will work with his theatre group and also receive vocational training. He wishes to get them out of the stereotypical profession of circus-clowning and get them alternate ways of earning an income. “Kino Kao is just one aspect of this plan, which has now become a lifetime project for me,” says Rabha. Though he is currently funding this project through his group Dapon- The Mirror, Rabha is also in talks with the government for some financial aid.
These actors and directors have blurred the line between theatre and activism. They are creating a platform where the marginalised can speak up for their dignity and human rights. For instance, Molagaapodi talks about gender and class oppression in villages. Stemming from personal experiences, the play features sex workers and transgenders. Chennai-based director Srijith Sundaram, also a social activist, has been working with both communities for several years. “Look at the atrocities committed against them, especially transgenders, by the police. What’s their fault?
And, what about children and women who are kidnapped and sold for money? Don’t they have a right to live with dignity as well? Sundaram was very clear that he wanted to involve both these communities when he set up his theatre group in December 2010,” says Poonkuzhali, writer and human rights activist, who also acts in the play.
On a platform usually reserved for doyens of the theatre, these actors and directors are trying to create a space for themselves. Confident of the issues they represent, they can only hope that the audience will not only accept their creations but also change its perspective. Kolkata-based director Sandip Bhattacharya, who will stage Santaap, about the eunuchs of Titli Basti, feels it is time that we blurred the line between mainstream and marginalised. “When I staged my play in Bengal last year, I invited 12 eunuchs to the show. When they came in, the audience gave them a look which said ‘Oh God! They have come here as well.’ But after the play got over, I called the 12 of them on stage and they got a standing ovation,” he says. Though his play does not feature eunuchs as actors, the eunuchs have been instrumental in shaping the way it has been staged. “They taught our actors how to talk, clap and dance,” says Bhattacharya.
Each of these plays aims to restore dignity to a community. It also offers a space where the marginalised can come into their own as artists. “When we walk down a road, people call out to us as netraheen or ‘no-eyes’,” says Gangopadhyay who has been using drama therapy since 1996. Most of his actors come from diverse walks of life; some are LIC agents, while others sell candles at traffic signals. “But when we perform on stage, we are only seen as performers and nothing else. This kind of therapy gives us confidence and helps our mobility, orientation and social communication. But most of all, it gives us an identity.”
The 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav will be held across eight venues, January 8-22
