Sudhanva Deshpande has been closely associated with the radical theatre group Jana Natya Manch (Janam) since many years. He has been one of the driving forces behind the India Theatre Forum's 'Spaces Of Theatre, Spaces For Theatre' seminar at Ninasam in Heggodu. Here, he talks at length about the relevance of Janam today, and the development of its new space in Delhi.
Vikram Phukan
Do you think political theatre is on the wane in the country?
I'm not too sure about that. A lot of street theatre is still taking place, even if it doesn't get written about. In Andhra Pradesh there is the Praja Natya Mandali that does a huge amount of street theatre, with upto 1200 units across the state--not just in taluka-towns but literally in every village. 70% of its membership comprises agricultural laborers. A large number of them are women, Dalits or adivasis. Even if untrained in theatre, they come with their own traditions and experiences, and they want to articulate their aspirations and struggles. It's just that their work is completely under the radar.
What about the theatre that does manage to be talked about--has there has been a shift in values there or a diminishing of social responsibility?
It's different in different parts of the country. In Patna, you'll find most theatre people, whether they profess a political ideology or not, demonstrate a strong connect to society in their work in a way that the upper middle-class urban theatre doesn't. In Bombay, the work of Sunil Shanbag thrills me hugely--here is first-rate theatre that stands on its own as aesthetic performance, but he also has a social comment that he is unafraid to make.
So you don't think that the potency of the politics on stage has dwindled.
This has been my long-standing belief, and it reflects itself in the work of Janam, that the potency in our work really depends on the potency of the political environment around us and the movements to which we connect to outside of theatre. In the 70s we had a strong anti-Emergency movement which was resonant for a lot of people. Theatre took place against that backdrop, and acquired that political edge. Theatre in West Bengal in the 60s and 70s reflected the great turmoil of those times--the Naxalbari movement, the semi-fascist terror unleashed by the Congress, the Left coming to power in 1978. Increasingly in India, we have a section of the middle class that's doing very well. They may have large disposable incomes and first world amenities, but there are also very large numbers of people being pushed further into poverty elsewhere. This is an explosive situation that isn't reflected adequately in theatre. Farmer suicides may signify a great agrarian distress, but there haven't been any large movements of the peasantry as a result. If that were to happen, it would find ready echoes in theatre. Theatre in some way or the other, whether it's refracted or indirect, takes from society and gives back to society. That's the dialectic that one has to study.
Janam itself has been considered a movement historically, with its own impetus that pushed it to the forefront in the 80s. How do you see its place in society today?
Well, our plays still have a great number of takers. In Delhi itself, there is a lot of demand for our performances, which always attract large audiences. Sometimes we are unable to fulfill that demand.
Is it seen as a kind of entertainment?
I don't think so. We still perform overwhelmingly in the poorer sections of the city. We perform for working people which very often isn't the industrial working class. It's the completely unorganized working class in mohallas and bastis. We perform in schools catering to children of the poor. We may not quite manage to publicize our work as much. We have a website which we find difficult to keep updated with our itinerary or videos or our statistics, but we do perform a lot. Last month, there was the All-India strike of trade unions. We had been performing for a month, and put together a string of 45 performances.
So the brand of theatre that Janam stands for continues to remain relevant. There is always the need of protest.
Yes, and the most important thing is that the inequities remain. In big cities like Bombay or Delhi, the historical city is dying, in a sense. In large tracts of the city, systems are collapsing--the health system, the public distribution system, electricity, education. None of it thrives. On the outskirts however, you find these completely self-contained townships which pull towards themselves a large share of the city's resources. There are entire apartment buildings that are centrally air-conditioned. You have townships built around a golf-course. In my view, such townships are not sustainable economically, socially and politically, but most importantly it's unsustainable ecologically. What you need is to regenerate the historical city, recreate the mohallas, create a sense of ownership in people, which would mean they have a stake in the development of their mohallas. In all of this, culture in general, but theatre in particular, can play a very big role.
Do you prefer to work only at the microscopic level of theatre rather than expanding your reach by harnessing the information channels that are now available?
I believe that theatre, at any given point of time, reaches out to very few people. There is a limited audience for every act of theatre, but I don't see that as a disadvantage. In these performances we are so close to the people, they can reach out and touch us. The theatre happens in their midst--where they live, or work, or study. For a moment, their ordinary space gets transformed to a theatre space. Even if that is transitory, it allows for a certain intimacy of address and dialogue, which may just not be there in a Youtube video, for instance.
Do you ever get a sense of the impact that comes about via street theatre, apart from the direct reactions of an immediate audience? Any kind of anecdotal evidence that points to the influence you exercise?
I'm glad that you used the word 'anecdotal', because that's what it is. I don't think anybody has a system of measuring what the impact may be. In our own lives, there may be a book we may have read that has stayed with us, and may open up a way of looking at the world. At that point, you may not realize what a work of art is doing to you, but over time, you recall it in different contexts. That impact is very hard to measure but we do know that in the mohallas where we perform regularly, we have a kind of fan following. There is a buzz as soon as the troupe arrives, kids gather around, everybody knows us there as a theatre outfit. The issues touch them because it's their lives we're talking about.
Do you feel the people are empowered enough to bring about the changes that your theatre advocates? Do you reach out to the powers-that-be as well?
Changes are a little bit more difficult to track. Theatre on its own, or any art on its own, cannot bring about any change and it's unreasonable to expect that it would. It's not a constraint of the medium because I feel that theatre can enable or empower, in very significant ways, the people who will bring out the change eventually. One role theatre plays is to give strength. When we performed for the striking workers at Maruti, they derived a lot of succor from our work. Theirs has been a long struggle, and it gave them a lot of hope. The other role is to become an internal voice of critique and rally people around issues that may not have affected them directly. This is the tenth year of the Godhra pogrom and we have a play that came out of that moment, and that has evolved continuously over ten years. Even now, it activates people's memories of Gujarat. That is true even for audiences in Delhi who were not caught up in the violence directly. Theatre connects to several different things but if you expect that a play happens, and suddenly people will be galvanized to change things, that doesn't happen.
How did the need of a physical space for Janam come about?
When Safdar (Hashmi) was alive, he had felt a need of a cultural centre where we could train ourselves. None of us come with a background of theatre training, so after a while, the craft gets a bit rusty, and we need to take focus, and space is important for that. Then, whenever we perform, there are large numbers of young people in bastis who would want to join us as actors, but logistically it was difficult to engage with them. Now, the centre can attract people from within the basti we are located in. At least the kids in that area can walk in, and get trained to act, which would be an invaluable experience. Besides acting, Safdar also wanted to create a centre of vocational training--in the mid 80s when the video revolution was underway, he had wanted to provide videography training to the youth in a mohalla perhaps as a means of livelihood, and maybe, as a way of telling stories of people's lives rather than just recording weddings. The idea was nipped in its bud when he was killed, but it stayed with us for a long time. It's still Safdar's dream, but updated to our times.
What does that that involve?
Well, it is a theatre studio. Theatre groups in Delhi don't have any dedicated rehearsal space where they can do advanced rehearsals. So we see our space as a creative resource that they can use and access. The idea of theatre today is also changing. There is a lot of performance art, improvised work, or theatre that is technologically sophisticated. To develop that kind of work, you need dedicated rehearsal space that is hard to otherwise find in the city. The other thing is to connect to the mohalla we're in. We can draw the youth into this space and work with them. For instance, we're thinking of running a library for the children in that basti. This has nothing to do with theatre, per se, but we want the children to get culturally aware and open their minds. We also want to run a local history project where young people go out into the mohalla and talk to residents and figure out their stories. Who are these people, where they come from, what do they have in their homes--old photographs, old utensils, clothes. This could lead to a small exhibition where we can recount the tale of what has happened to this mohalla through the artifacts they loan us. We haven't started on this, having just acquired the space but we're very excited about it.
Is there a performance space as well?
The studio space is something you can perform in. You can do small performances there. It's not a proscenium. It's basically a hall in which we've sunken the ground a little bit to create more height. The central well, so to speak, could be a performing space.
The physical space isn't going to ground you... will the street theatre continue as extensively?
Our street theatre will continue regardless of the space. That space will be where we create and rehearse our work--our permanent address. In the centre we are hoping to attract people who may not be part of our street theatre, but may be interested in running our other initiatives. There is no end to the possibilities. For example, the new Ambedkar university in Delhi are talking to us in connection with our local history project. They want us to do a pilot project with some involvement from their faculty and students, and we are the enabling agency because we're located in the mohalla. My dream of the local history museum, has dovetailed into what the university has been mandated to do. Then there are other things like getting musicians to come in and work with the several marriage bands here, which could be fantastic. The bands work in the most abysmal conditions so this would regenerate a sense of their art. Some of them are fairly skilled, they just don't have the motivation or the platform to display those skills. Nearby, we have a colony of puppeteers, and there are wedding drummers who rehearse there as well. So the culture is alive. There are so many ways to connect once you get your resources together, and think of innovative ways to bring these connections about.
Can you tell us something about your involvement in the Spaces Seminar, and what you think will be fostered by this exercise?
We had started thinking about having a seminar on Space largely because so many theatre groups were creating their own spaces across the country. So we wanted to ask the question of what we mean by 'Spaces of Theatre'? It involves so many different things. For an actor, his body is, in itself, a space that he has to animate. It also connects to questions of sustainability, or management practices that theatre-wallahs don't usually take to kindly, but which have to be acknowledged. It connects itself to the larger eco-system in which theatre thrives. How can we enrich that? It draws upon urban development as well, and that is where my primary interest lies. I want to talk about urban spaces and how theatre can intervene in those spaces. The seminar may not be able to address everything in full detail but it can get conversations going. It can help in knowledge creation. This is a seminar of theatre-wallahs, for theatre-wallahs. Some academics are also there but it's mostly us theatre people who are examining our own work. It's also very important for us to talk to each other as people who're invested in theatre. We must have those dialogues, and a seminar like this where a hundred and fifty people can come together is a rare event in our lives, and it's very pressing. We need to foster a kind of synergy, and hopefully the seminar will result in people seeing something they can contribute to. That's an element we often undervalue--the element of inspiring each other. A seminar like this brings it all together.
*Vikram Phukan runs the theatre appreciation website, Stage Impressions- www.stageimpressions.com
Do you think political theatre is on the wane in the country?
