I don’t know the exact moment when my journey started with theatre. I don’t know when I moved into the process, or the process moved into me. The more I delved deeper, the more I got disturbed and disillusioned with the world around me. Before theatre, my world was on an automatic mode. Theatre introduced me to the the fact that i had gears and a steering – it made me conscious of my place in the world.
The moment you get involved with theatre, you are able to see. You get defamiliarised with the familiar. Through theatre, you start unlearning the chauvinistic, nationalistic and patriarchal narratives that you are fed since childhood – through discussion. And therefore, you can actually mark that point as when you get serious about theatre – it is that moment when quarreling with your parents and peers over an issue becomes the norm.
In a society where there’s such a huge absence of dialogue – theatre paves the way for discussion, and for questions. Therefore, in the words of my fellow batchmate and friend , Steven S George, you come to see that, “Despite the on-the-surface democratic structure, our country is still ruled by an alliance of capitalists, feudal lords and politicians where police, educational institutions, religion, cinema, and advertisements are mere political tools.” You come to see ideology not just as a word, but manifesting into reality.
When I gave the auditions for Hasratein – The Dramatics Society of Ram Lal Anand College in 2014, my first year of BA English honours, I had no idea, what was to come. But soon enough, my reason for coming to college became theatre itself. Classes passed in our eagerness to rush for the practice near the parking lot area. Our mistakes culminated into the single word “bhaag” (run) from our president – and soon we were seen running, taking rounds of the practice area.
Our seniors taught us from nought – to achieve excellence in the craft, the form, the aesthetics and to be alert to the questions of ideas and politics. And the last thing was to expect any reward out of our practice, for the ends didn’t matter but the process. And soon enough, we got involved in the process of making the play. The street play – “Colors of India”, our annual production for the year 2014 raised potent questions about the role of political parties, media and to be precise – the state itself, in perpetrating communal violence.
Free as we were to carve out our characters with respect to the context, my character of Basharat – a Muslim victim of the 2002 Gujrat pogrom took shape bit by bit as the research for the play progressed. Our research for the play, opened up to me the tales of gore and blood of thousands of victims . And soon, through memories of a distant past and dismal present, Basharat carved himself into me. Though it was an unhappy experience, it taught me to have empathy as a human being towards victims of riots and wars. Hence, any incident of communal violence around the globe affects me in quite personal ways, resulting in fits of anger. My pg mates would dismiss my newfound consciousness as sentimental outbursts, but seldom did they know that I had entered the shoes of one of the victims that I was, one of the victims.
Theatre taught me to be honest. Our dedication as a team towards a single aim got us to shed our masks before we even knew it. We learned to be disciplined, no matter how cold it was in the morning, you had to carry those big props and reach the performance area on time. We learned to be hardworking, may it be researching for the plays or practising the whole night before the performance. We lived and loved with the trips to IITs, singing songs in the train and late night bonfires, losing ourselves to the moments that I’ll cherish my whole life.
To be frank, theatre is generally, not a feel-good experience. To work with a team of 20 different people also means disagreements among members become a part of the day to day practice. The lines of personal and political life start to blur, and you come to a point when you need to take a stand. But at a microcosmic level, the anti-establishment nature of street theatre creates space for dialogue, for ideas, for questions of contemporary relevance. Our history of silence has not done us any good, and street theatre plays a pivotal role in this sense as it encourages the democratic temper of our society.
In the words of Dario Fo – The work of theatre is not to document filth but to generate messages of hope for the masses. I became anxious, and angry towards my surroundings in my first year of college after becoming a part of “Hasratein”. And so will I remain for the rest of my days. That’s the gift theatre gave me.