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Democracy's safety valve

ANJANA RAJAN

M.K. Raina feels only that theatre merits the name that takes a stand.

Actors continue to shuttle between theatre and cinema. Some admit to doing so because film acting pays better, theatre often pays nothing at all. They also admit to coming back to the stage because it brings them creative fulfilment. It leaves one wondering sometimes why commercial success so rarely goes with quality in art.

Perhaps the answer has to do with the subjective nature of evaluating the arts. What after all is quality in a theatrical performance? Some would ask, is it not enough to stage an aesthetic show, a slick production, a pretty picture? Reputed theatre director, actor and documentary filmmaker M.K. Raina has a simple criterion.

"I would not call that theatre," he says. Theatre by its very nature has to take a stand, carry a message, feels the veteran of thousands of performances who stands for causes as varied as HIV-AIDs awareness to championing the dying rural traditions of art.

"I believe the safety valve for any democratic culture is theatre," states this founder member of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, whose history as a forum to combat state aggression towards artists who go against the grain of governments is well known.

Artists are the product of their individual background. In Raina's case, the penchant for theatre as a vibrant democratic cause can be traced to his Kashmiri Pandit lineage as well as his days at the National School of Drama, where he was taught by some of the greatest thinkers and practitioners of Indian theatre, led by then NSD director, Ebrahim Alkazi.

Raina, a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee of 1995, also points out the need for theatre that engenders thinking and debate in a country like India, which is "an emerging democracy and a country that is fast changing."

Some hope

With companies, particularly Mahindra and Mahindra, taking an interest in sponsoring theatre - Raina was one of the jury members in the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards festival that concluded in New Delhi this Thursday - he states, somewhat gingerly, "A little bit of it is being felt that theatre can also be supported." He lays part of the credit at the door of NSD, whose "huge" annual festival has contributed to raising awareness, and probably the profile too, of the theatre arts. However, he adds, "The fact remains that theatre all over the world has to be supported."

What he finds heartening about the Mahindra venture in particular is that the corporate giant offers its participation "in a very dignified way, keeping a low profile."

The programme chalked out by the Mahindras, under the inspiration of Ravi Dubey, formerly of Barry John's Theatre Action Group, who shifted to the corporate world and has now stepped back into theatre, is ambitious, with a theatre academy among other plans on the cards. The award winners too are to be selected from next year, after a wider process of competitive festivals across the country, though this year the eight final groups were merely recommended by an expert committee.

All support programmes in India seem to be linked with competitions, in the one arena where rivalry should not play a role. Does Raina believe this is the best way? "I don't know," he replies. "Because I might not enter if it is a competition, quite frankly." So maybe we can take comfort from knowing he brought all his integrity to bear in choosing the winners. Raina feels, more important than that concept is his lending support to such a movement because of the promise it holds for the health of the theatre arts.

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