Happy Birthday Theatre
Happy World Theatre’s Day To All Of Us!
1. We are in 2007. Where Bollywood meets Hollywood meets Silicon Valley. Sillywood it can be called. And the one asset which is missing, is human imagination.
2. The theatre I grew up in, is having an identity crisis. What is it? Remember when we switched from extravaganzas to musical theatre to realism? Then to neo-realism. And then to expressionism and absurdism. Then to inter-culturalism and then to cross-culturalism. It was all so definable. It was a comedy, tragedy or murder mystery. Then there were designer plays. Then, nothing. Today, we can’t even make out a great play from a trashy one.
3. These days, they speak about theatre annexing the markets. For instance, Shakespeare is said to be a half trillion dollar market . . . plus or minus half a trillion dollars. No one can define a Shakespeare play which is why the market is so big.
4. The Economist described a $93 billion market . . . for tourist theatre. That is, plays like PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, CATS, CHICAGO, BOMBAY DREAMS, Kathakali and Kalari. This is greater than the total value of shipments from India.
5. Here’s how it works: someone gets up at an event (like Edinburgh Fringe Fest) and creates a new buzzword. “Audiences want to see more and more plays that discuss the future of … bathroom slippers,” says so and so. So and so will attend two or three international forums at higher and higher levels of incompetence and then disappear, winding up as a shoe salesman in Keokuk. The media and NGOs picks up the quote and finds another person to support it. “Yep, theatre about bathroom slippers is big. I see it as the next big thing,” says impresario such and such.
6. A research academician jumps on the buzzwagon and issues a report claiming “it is big. Yeah, really big.” Other researchers cannot be left in the lurch and issue their papers and interviews, each claiming big, bigger and biggest claims to show that they really know about bathroom slippers.
7. New theatre companies come into existence and existent groups split. Ford and Rockfeller give them money; venture capitalists force money upon them. Newsletters are promoted with the inside dope, written by same. Seminar sessions are developed and a new conference is presented. One by one, every theatrewallah announces their commitment to bathroom slippers, even if they don’t know what it is. The press does special sections and columnists proclaim “It’s the super ism of the 21st century.” A magazine is created to cover the new market and then a theatre festival: Bathroom Slipper Plays.
8. Later, projections say the natives and folk art isn’t ready, the audience is uninitiated, the box office isn’t ready. Bathroom slippers becomes a footnote to history. In the meantime, the academicians, impresarios, theatre groups (split & unsplit) and one Derrida follower, shows how the National Theatre and the Lincoln Centre have made a fortune. They were right, bathroom slippers was a super ism.
9. Getting back to theatre: Playwrights produce plays and of course producers produce plays. Directors have eliminated playwrights because plays by playwrights are bad. Hollywood and Bollywood make movies based on plays and so, playwrights are good again. In the meantime actors become larger than life. They reject the word since it is a pain to memorise it. Digital technology reduces the word to an image. Performance text eliminates playwrights, play-text, phrases, words, punctuations and paper. Such theatre is produced by avant garde groups in France, Philippines and even in Mumbai with SAHI RE SAHI and MARATHI BAANA.
10. Such plays are the future. No one has yet put a value on it. May be they have run out of metaphors or don’t know any. Its like navigating the internet, which as you know, is like driving at night with no lights, blindfolded. You can do anything on stage except religion?
11. Speaking of the Almighty, a recent article said that BROADWAY sold only 6 million tickets last season and this was not up to expectations. 6 million is not up to expectations!
12. I’ve a friend who has penned a play in Sindhi. He was told you’re a pioneer. I consoled my friend. I said, there’s nothing wrong with being a pioneer. Although, the definition of pioneer no longer deals with creations: a pioneer is someone with a big bank balance.
13. Much of what I see is multi-mediocrity. But the potential is enormous. When it is good, it is mind-boggling. When it is bad, it is the norm. By the way, am I the only one willing to admit that I don’t always understand the play, ALL THE BEST?
14. I was looking at a book from the 15th century the other day. No computer. No CD-ROM reader. Just a pair of old eyes. All these new approaches seem to restrict rather than expand access to information. We are creating an information elite, sort of an artificial intelligentsia. Paper and television are the media to reach mass markets. The company that finds a way to combine them will inherit the earth.
15. Shakespeare used to place ink on paper. Today we have playwrights who maintain text databases, playwrights who cut-and-paste from CD-ROMs, playwrights who produce multimedia plays. And by the way, they also put ink on paper. What then is a playwright? What then is the theatre?
16. We must hire a professor from IIM or IIT to measure the productivity gains that come with the billions of seconds invested in theatre. But what if he concludes, there are no positive effects. Where did our productivity go?
17. Think back: We never read a magazine called How To Produce A Perfect Play for Imperfect People or attended a symposium called A Forum To Increase The Number of Shows At No Extra Cost or bought a book that told us the tips and tricks of foreign funding (use a deodorant). Or even subscribed to The Underground Theatre Actor’s Guide for Mainstream Serials & Ads.
18. Academics will argue that the we were going beyond mere language and for a much richer context, integrating other media into a new form of communication. Whenever something is said to be richer you have to be it to get it.
19. It always reminded me of Mark Twain and the typewriter. He supposedly typed a manuscript for his publisher who wrote back that he left out the punctuation. Twain sent a sheet filled with periods and commas and semicolons, etc. Insert where necessary, he said.
20. Hopefully, the Twain shall meet. Because Mark eschewed the typewriter and went back to pencils and pads. He would love the program that digitises your personal calligraphy so you can type your handwriting. Or the Personal Digital Assistant that translates handwriting to type so you can write your typing. Or voice recognition which eliminates both writing and typing. Or television, which eliminates writing, typing and even thinking. All you need is a thumb. ThumbRule Zindabad.
21. Are we gone with the winds of change?
22. The only truth is the truth of the moment – we do not learn from the past because we are preoccupied by the future.
23. What’s new? What’s next? We can expect the following in 2007:
a). New plays. New stuff.
b). Revised plays. New stuff.
c). Some more plays. Upgrades.
d). And one more theatre festival. Bigger.
e). Models on stage.
f). VJs on stage.
g). Wannabes on stage.
h). Computer on stage.
i). Three new one act play competitions.
j). Newer awards.
k). Bathroom slippers?
24. So what theatre are we inhabiting? Darned (to borrow an expression from George Bush) if I know. It no longer has a name.
25. We do have a level playing field now. It is no longer IBM versus Apple. It is USA versus everyone else.
26. So what is the vision of a future yet to come: It is 2094 . . .
27. It is 2094 . . . IPTA is still doing, plays.
28. It is 2094 . . . A committee in Delhi still decides the future of theatre in India.
29. It is 2094 . . . Reliance has acquired Microsoft, IBM, AT&T and the Election Commission. But they (still!) refuse to sponsor a theatre festival of Marathi plays in Kankavli.
30. It is 2094 . . . European society still uses toilet rolls next to their potty. There is still a use for paper.
31. It is 2094 . . . The international monetary system at the box office of future theatres are based on Monopoly money. The picture of Amitabh Bachchan is on every bill. Monetary and credit transactions are via retinal eye scan. Patrons at Prithvi Theatre still tear up small sheets of carbon paper as a ceremonial ritual. No one remembers why.
32. It is 2094 . . . Actors have little signs on their forehead that say “Intel inside”
33. It is 2094 . . . Audiences start a new trend by demanding printed versions of plays. Retail operations arise to sell manually processed media. They are called bookstores.
34. It is 2094 . . . Karan Johar’s son decides to shoot the Bollywood version of ANDHA YUG in the south lawn of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, now an airport.
35. It is 2094 . . . The bill that is expected to sanction funds for a new 350-seater theatre in Bandra Reclamation is still locked in a Parliamentary Committee.
MORAL: The moral of the story since every story must have one: I leave you with two quotes from Leonid Krapchuk, head of state of the Ukraine, and it may describe our theatre, whatever it is:
QUOTE 1.
“Today we stand at the edge of
a great abyss.”
QUOTE 2.
“Tomorrow, we take a
giant step forward.”
HAPPY WORLD THEATRE’s DAY.
PS: Gift yourself a bathroom slipper! Amen!
Tags: Theater
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
=d>=d>=d>=d>
“The only truth is the truth of the moment – we do not learn from the past because we are preoccupied by the future”
Naked truth so poignantly discoursed…
=d>
Its not because of the technical advancements but because of Cultural Regression.
We lost our roots, and worse, no one realizes it..!!
Everybody is at the edge of the Abyss, and wants to take a GIANT step ahead; success they call it!!
Ramu,as always…what an intersting post!!! laugh ? cry ? feel nothing ?
Got an sms from one ipta person…happy world theatre day.we r mere mortals but the theatre is as eternal as life itself. was wondering if this birthday also need just one sms wish. why cant we have some plays instead n celebrate it.next day read one column n the columnist was wondering the same. Ramu ???