Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 3, December 2002
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Mee, Erin B. (Ed.), Contemporary Drama: India. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 2001
361pp. ISBN 0-8018-6621-9 (hb), 0-8018-6622-7 (pb), £34.50hb, £15.50pb
Reviewed by
This collection of recent Indian plays, five in translation from Indian languages and one in the original English, is a useful addition to the recent considerable increase in contemporary Indian theatre available in print and in English – most of which is due to the exemplary work of the small but excellent Seagull Press in Calcutta and of OUP India in Delhi. Three of these plays are in fact already available in print, however (Girish Karnad’s The Fire and the Rain is published by Seagull, Usha Ganguli’s Rudali appears in a Seagull volume which also contains Mahasweta Devi’s story from which it was adapted, and Mahesh Dattani’s English-language Tara is published by Penguin in a volume of his collected plays), so it might have been more useful to have selected others which were not.
Erin Mee’s introduction is useful on the origin and style of each play, but slightly less so in terms of its characterization of the place of these plays in recent work in India theatre; the sections on individual plays are likewise helpful, but might have been better placed alongside – preferably after – the play in question. The introduction doesn’t allow itself room either to discuss fully other work by these authors (Kavalam Panikkar, Tripurari Sharma and Datta Bhagat in addition to those mentioned above) or to place it against others or against other forms of performance in India. However, it does, in a short space, provide a relatively good framework, some basic cultural and historical detail, and some sensible claims for the importance of the plays and the kinds of work they represent, bearing out Richard Schechner’s claim on the jacket that the book ‘will show why today’s Indian theatre is among the world’s most active, exciting and important’.
I find it annoying that the introduction specifically addresses only American readers. This seems insulting for a start to the large number of second and later generation Indians in the USA. The use of American spelling in the translations, whilst understandable given the above bias, is also linguistically both insensitive and wrong: Indian English does not, except in slang and email usage, follow this convention. Since however the collection is aimed at Americans, I think it needs rather greater detail about the culture, history and current mix of theatre forms found in India. Categories such as ‘theater of roots’ and ‘women’s theater’, although not without justification, are used without reference to the extensive political and aesthetic debate which they have aroused in India among theatre academics and practitioners alike. I think it’s important that people who don’t know – i.e. particularly the American students at whom the book is aimed – should get some sense of the colonialist, nationalist and gendered context against which such theatre works.
The general introduction could also have done with rather more on, for instance, the history and significance of IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association); and the kind of work, as opposed to a mere mention, of e.g. Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar – not to mention Habib Tanvir, Chandrasekhar Kambar, Satish Alekar, etc. Nor is there anything about the theatre scene in large towns, and very little on extensions (or indeed origins) of ‘street theatre’ – another term which needs contextualising – or on training or performance circumstances, in particular economics and the professional/amateur configuration. So to some extent the plays remain in a void.
They are all, however, well-crafted and significant pieces of work in a variety of styles.
Girish Karnad’s The Fire and the Rain displays his sophisticated command of theatre as form and as metaphor, and his ability to interrogate traditions and attitudes; so introductory discussion here needs to focus more specifically on what uses Karnad is making of ritual practice and its contrast with theatre, particularly in the way the latter reveals the emptiness of authority structures and power plays. This is in many ways a bleak and uncompromising play about how such structures mask critical inadequacies. Rituals and traditional authority are inadequate to provide contacts within and between the community and the environment; the practice of theatre, by contrast, teaches how to face the ‘other’ in oneself, how to live with ‘death’ and how to embody the essence of other entities. In this play, ‘ritual’ kills; Karnad, here as for instance also in Nagamandala, indicates that only the transformative dynamic of the performer can combat the deadliness of (gendered) hierarchies.
K.N. Panikkar’s play Aramba Chekkan is a version of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth which arose from collaboration with Mee. This is certainly an interesting way of making Panikkar’s process accessible to non-Indian readers, and the scripting to some extent illustrates the largely Sanskrit-theatre-derived conventions within which he works: performance builds on and enriches the written word, often in the form of arabesque solos as in Kudiyattam, and events are never other than richly symbolic. Possible charges of dumbing down might be levelled, but the format and process of the play is typical of Panikkar and mixes colloquial language, humour and potential physical performance style (e.g. masks, actors as animals) with some interesting environmentalist angles on the myth. Other questions might be mooted, such as: is this a kind of mythological masala (or, since it’s based on a Greek myth in this instance, a mixture of mezes and masala) dished up for a ‘global’ audience? Panikkar is a senior and highly respected figure in South India, but is his theatre as relevant as he claims? There’s an interesting debate to be had here about the levels of significance on which such a theatre can work, but Mee’s comments don’t really open it up.
Usha Ganguli’s Rudali is adapted from Mahasweta Devi’s short story. Mee should at least have footnoted the existence of the Seagull edition mentioned above. She explains the Ganguli/Devi link and the play’s shifts of emphasis usefully, but her notes could also have said rather more about Devi’s other plays. Rudali – like Devi’s Water – powerfully articulates the social nexus and economic situation of the marginalised; Ganguli shifts the emphasis to women rather than class, but they’re still economically deprived and socially/politically marginalised. Devi is important as an example of work dealing with this (enormous) social underclass – and her work could usefully be contrasted with Bhagat’s play (see below) and with Tanvir’s Charandas Chor and Kambar’s Jokumaraswami. There’s a lot of verbal and vocal energy in this play, especially in the powerful irony of poor women earning money from performing as mourners of the rich; their theatricalisation of their role articulates the divisive socio-economic structures. Here, as with Girish Karnad, there is a keen sense of utilising essentially theatrical qualities for appropriate effect. Ganguli draws on Devi’s manipulation of language registers, which, like Karnad’s, Kambar’s and Dattani’s, is particularly subtle, skilful and powerful. These are good theatre makers and good writers, and their work, using a whole range of theatrical forms, engages with central social and political issues of recent and contemporary Indian life.
Tripurari Sharma’s The Wooden Cart is a research-based play on a provocative subject (the social stigma of leprosy, figuring also as metaphor for many kinds of social exclusion). Because of its method of composition and performance style (originally workshopped as separate scenes), it might be argued that it has good scenes rather than being a coherent play; there are perhaps too many characters for coherence and it perhaps displays the Bollywood-influenced tendency to melodrama of a good deal of Indian ‘naturalistic’ writing - e.g. Dina Mehta’s Brides are not for Burning. Scenes are suggestive templates; but they are characterised by an energy and intensity which makes this a valuable extension of the street-theatre process which underpins it.
Mahesh Dattani’s Tara focuses on another contentious and highly relevant Indian contemporary issue - the relative status of girl and boy-children - but also extends it to engage with an interrogation of the feminine as external or internal. Dattani’s concise and intelligent writing allows both levels to emerge strongly, and there is a good debate to be had here. Some aspects of characterisation and setting initially look too stereotyped, but he manages reversals and revelations well and opens up alternative perspectives. Perhaps criticisms about the proscenium form, which are simply mentioned in Mee’s discussion, could be extended with reference to its specific limitations in the play rather than as an ‘un-Indian’ feature. And if the staging appears slightly wooden, the dialogue is lively and effective. Dattani writes good social and psychological drama in a contemporary vein.
Datta Bhagat’s Routes and Escape Routes, for all its interest as an example of Dalit literature, seems (a) very much one-genre political discussion – more like a seminar than a piece of theatre - the relationship issues seem very much tacked on and not really germane to the politics, although, since they are about gender, they could have been; and (b) over-detailed and hence confusing. It does however convey something of the prejudices and complexities of caste and community in a disadvantaged urban setting. Dramatically and theatrically however it is rather limited, although Mee’s introduction puts the best case in suggesting that because Bhagat’s focus is on the intellectual transformation of the characters, the play demonstrates the importance of listening to and respecting alternative view points; hence dialogue is foregrounded as against mise-en-scène.
This collection demonstrates a whole range of theatrical and dramatic competencies which illustrate the richness of the Indian theatre scene, though it would have been helpful to point out in the introduction that most of it is performed under extremely difficult circumstances, far less advantageous than even the most impecunious theatre most of the book’s target audience will have come into contact with. Karnad’s layered understanding of ritual and theatricality; Dattani’s exploration of gender as a social and psychological process; Sharma’s incorporation of image-structures from activist models; Karnad’s and Panikkar’s mix of registers, inviting engagement with symbol and irony as central to the imaginative power of theatre; Dattani’s, Bhagat’s and Ganguli’s use of specifics of sociopolitical reality to articulate issues of oppression and marginalisation; all this, as the introduction rightly emphasises, both ‘illustrate(s) the enormous range’ of contemporary Indian work and demonstrates its major place on the world stage.