A Report on the Theatre Workshop
The English theatre workshop was conducted by the theatre company Tin Can. The setting—the terrace of an apartment building, was perfect because it provided a ready audience, albeit very few. This included a little girl who kept asking ‘What name?’ from her balcony in the opposite building. The rest of the audience were unaware of the fact that they were indeed a potential audience, because they carried on with whatever they had been doing on the terrace of another adjacent building, unmindful of a play being rehearsed very close to them. I walked in while the group was doing their warm-up exercise, and it was clear then that I was going to have as much fun watching them rehearse their play as they seemed to be having even warming up for it. It was an exercise to sharpen their reflexes, and as they dived deep into the fun of it, their ‘instructor’ kept pushing them to up the ante and make it tougher for themselves, which they did even more gleefully. At the end, they were warmed up indeed.
The play opened with a bang. The characters were all members of a junta, and to keep with the idiosyncrasies needed for this, the dialogue was crude and the use of the dupatta (as a cummerbund or pagri) as part of the costume became important. As the play moved along, it was clear that it was about the nature of numbers, not so much as numerical quantifications, but in the context of politics and society. ‘Numbers are volatile!’ was shouted out loudly. This play was going to be in-your-face, and it was an exciting prospect. The instructor stayed in the background, letting spontaneity and fun maintain their essential hold on the performance. I wondered if the use of the mob was an allusion to the recent Singur sham.
The instructor though, reminded his actors of his presence ever so slightly when he felt it was needed. He told one of his actors that he wanted to see his character, and not him. He gave them tips on how to wear the pagri in the context of the scene. Most delightful though was the lesson in sadism. Using real life examples, he told his brood how to put across the enjoyment of fiddling with a corpse, and how to hold a dirty secret from the audience. And all the time, people kept coming up with useful suggestions, and different things were ‘tested’ one after the other to see if they worked.
When I walked in on the second day, specific scenes were being rehearsed. Some things were changed on the spot by the boys, and this was commended as ‘brilliant’. The boys obviously loved every moment of it, and they understood what they were doing, which was very important, since the script was innovative enough to fox anyone, including a first time viewer like myself. However, I had cleared out my own doubts with the instructor the day before and so now I too was in the full swing of things. In one scene one of the characters got a phone call, and he angrily replied that the caller had not reached a brothel or Manipur! ‘Bloody Indian army,’ he said, disgruntled, as he hung up. This light touch, probably on what is considered ‘problematic’ by the government and state, was effective enough to support the play’s idea of a ‘wrong number’. Like this, there was a consistently good switch from idea to idea.
After the first run-through, I got the feeling that a bit more clarity in speech was needed, but otherwise it looked like a good show. In one of the scenes, the junta was asked by their ‘head’ about who causes riots. They come up with answers like Ajay Devgan, Sourav Ganguly, the Home Minister and the Prime Minister. Though this response could sound predictable to many, it brought out the idea of what associations are made with figures in authority and pop culture. At the end, the change was the actors’ interaction with the audience (namely me), which wasn’t there on the first day. Their performance was critiqued by the instructor. He reminded them not to forget their co actors’ presence, to be careful not to laugh out of place (laughter was an important action in the play) and other minor mistakes. He again stressed the importance of maintaining energy throughout, as he had been doing even on the previous day. I could see what he meant, because this play without energy would not be fit to perform.
The play was about numbers in all senses, roots of prejudices, and mobs—in a nutshell. And energy and laughter were needed as support throughout. To sum up the play there were spurts of contradictions, futility, and drunkenness. It was an interesting and refreshing mix. This was exactly the thought I left with.
— A report by Shamoni Sarkar
PeaceWorks intern