Theatre in conflict
|
"Real art attacks the wrong system" and director-playwright Ratan Thiyam's plays bear testimony to his words, writes HEMANGINI GUPTA.
|
UB PHOTOS
A deeply personal play in "Ritusamharam": Ratan Thiyam.
FOR a director whose repertory is based in conflict-torn Manipur, Ratan Thiyam's play "Ritusamharam", celebrating Nature through the four seasons, is pointedly removed from the daily realities of war.
There are no reminders of army atrocities in a State that has repeatedly cried out for the withdrawal of the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act); an Act the playwright too decries. Instead, "Ritusamharam" is almost magically removed from the conflict Thiyam describes painfully as routine.
Confronting violence
"Daily you get up and open the paper and read about killings in Gaza, problems in Sudan, problems in Iraq, 9/11," he says. "This is tough for me to digest as a human being. We always feel that as modern man we will have learnt from Socrates, from Plato or the scientists how to bring about harmony, but there has been no result."
Acknowledging the spiralling violence not just in the North East but also across the world, Thiyam says the multidimensional problems accompanying violence disturb creative activity, but asserts that "real art attacks the wrong system".
Thiyam's art in "Ritusamharam" seeks solace and sanity amidst the violence erupting around him. His attack is tempered by the metaphors and colours of Nature "from whom I get energy... I lean on the shoulder of Mother Nature"; the play confronts the daily realities lived by its cast and director by introducing antonymous elements to these exigencies.
Thiyam draws from the beauty of the North East to interpret Kalidasa's ancient verses in a play in Manipuri that uses a riot of colours and the tiny, precise movements of Manipuri dance to present a taut and structured extravagance.
It is a deeply personal play. Thiyam talks bitterly of confronting conflict every day, made to feel "like a second-class citizen... I have been arrested, gun pointed at my head, my car stopped. I cannot tolerate this."
He found himself disturbed all the time, losing his energy, unable to face attack from various angles and, distraught, he turned to Nature; his greatest source of energy whose "blooming flowers, open sky, moon" he had overlooked for so long.
"Modern man is supposed to know something about everything," says Thiyam, "but he has created a world where he is restless and suffers from being surrounded by technology. There has never been any balance with the spiritual and the mind becomes violent."
Beauty of Nature
Thiyam ekes out from the beauty of Nature an order inherent in it, to respond to the constant crisis around him. A man in a black overcoat fleetingly appears through the play, incongruous amidst the effervescence of Nature, lugging along a strolley, head bowed into cell phone; a constant allegory for Thiyam's own busy, itinerant life. "For me doing a play is something that goes with my own life cycle," he says.
The son of dancers, Thiyam studied drama at the National School of Drama before returning to Manipur to form Chorus Repertory Theatre, his fiercely disciplined and multi-faceted group.
The members make their own sets, with the hewing and splicing of wood becoming as integral to the performance as the show itself. Hierarchy of juniors and seniors is carefully maintained, with a firm dismissal of any "star image".
Actors are rigorously trained and invested in, making it hard for them to leave. They create masks, learn dance and music and theatre, cook their own food and maintain their own kitchen garden ("art is a composite form"), often having to reclaim it from vicious floods that threaten to sweep away the entire structure housing them, which they have only recently been able to afford to build.
"To keep the repertory together, the most important thing is not to pollute human relationships, otherwise people will come and go. We have a meagre salary, but even if we have no butter, bread will do," says Thiyam.
With many shows abroad recently, his "Ritusamaharam" often appeals to audiences far removed from Thiyam's own realities, suggesting that his confrontations of existential crises rather than realist ones have removed the need for the subtitles which he occasionally allowed, on a screen above the play.
"How many people know Sanskrit?" Thiyam asks. "But when translated into a play, you absorb and feel the meaning; it's in your nerves and goes to your fingers, toes, hairs, ears. Only then do you truly understand Kalidasa. The colours and gestures penetrate and speak to the audience."
His returning the Padma Shri in protest against the treatment meted out to the North East drew much attention, but he dismisses the publicity with an impatient gesture of his hand.
Constant protests
"I am constantly protesting through my plays," he says brusquely. "What are we giving our future generations? Are we giving them violence, cruelties and a dark future? If after 100 years they ask what we have given them, we will have no reply; we have only given violence and poverty. This is where I am afraid."
He speaks feelingly of the beauty of "the Switzerland of the East, which has seen no tourist for the last 20 years", its "hundreds of performing art forms and over 32 communities whose identity is never exposed", the lack of industries and jobs for young people, the "longing for peace... which is a simple thing".
Admitting some frustration at what he terms his unmatched expectations, he asks: "How long will you go on sinking into darkness and longing for a sun ray?"
But this is an incongruous strain in his tone and Thiyam soon steadies himself to talk of his spontaneous and deeply felt protests and his dream of leaving behind a legacy of liberty and freedom to future generations.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
