Playing to the gallery

A mega international theatre festival has just got over "" I mean the NSD Bharat Rang Mahotsav.

In the space of 18 days, 76 plays were showcased in six venues to packed houses, with the first show at 2 pm and the last scheduled at 9.30 pm every day.

The festival had 19 international plays, and 57 from different parts of India. Many questions were thrown up about selection, formatting, international participation, regional representation, audiences, media involvement, and so on, as any event is bound to generate. And I was excited about one or two new trends that emerged at the festival.

One is the strong presence of the north-eastern states that included Assam, Manipur (which are the regulars), Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh (which came for the first time).

In all, there were 10 productions from this region, and most of them of very high quality. NSD can claim credit for the modern theatre activity in this region "" earlier, through its distinguished alumni like Ratan Thiyam, Ebotombi, Dulal Roy et cetera, who were pioneers, and more recently, through extensive and well-planned workshops in the region.

What was initially a compulsion, as part of government policy, to spend 10 per cent of the budget on activities in the north-east, was turned into an opportunity to make a difference in the cultural expression of the region and break the alienation.

Several theatre workshops were held in different states of the north-east, and the participants were given the opportunity to travel within the region with plays prepared during the workshops.

This generated a great deal of excitement among youngsters as also awareness of the traditions of the neighbouring states. The energy, therefore, of these plays was raw and this infectious energy drew us into their fold. It is also an example of how a government policy, when implemented with imagination and commitment, can transform a sector positively.

While the north-east was largely represented by young directors, a large percentage of plays in the festival, from other regions too, were directed by young theatre directors, many of them in their thirties. And it was very heartening to see that they definitely stole the show. The themes they chose and the theatre language they evolved, reflected a very contemporary and modern sensibility.

A large number of them showed the capacity to take risks by working towards a highly multi-layered performance language. This privileging of experimentation over convention also underlines a certain, quiet confidence among young directors whose theatre language is emerging from the varied and global influences that they are exposed to.

And the themes ranged from comment on modern lifestyles to child trafficking to gender discrimination and reinterpreting classics. On the whole, the world that these young directors presented before us provides clear reason to be optimistic about the future of theatre.

The interesting Glass House Project that was also part of the festival had an actor who decided to "live" in a glass house for 360 hours, which was the duration of the entire festival, under full public gaze.

This was inspired by the reality shows one sees on TV and, in fact, was meant to be an exploratory project for the actor. It generated a host of questions and responses. The actor was on show and yet he was meant to merely engage in daily mundane tasks.

Is it possible to live life normally under full public gaze? How is this gaze different from that when he is performing on stage? Should he, or can he, actually try to live normally or should he perform a bit for the audience that is watching him, expecting something to happen?

What is the difference between life and performance? And do any moral issues enter the picture? Will this experience of being observed make any difference to his understanding of acting and actual performance?

The list of questions can go on. And since I am on the theme of young theatre workers, this project was also conceived by a young actor and director!