TODAY'S INTERVIEW
THURSDAY, JANUARY 02, 2003
Gendered Role-Play
'Poorva', the first Asian Women Directors' Theatre Festival and Conference, marks the coming of age of women's theatre in India. The fortnight-long festival, which begins on January 3, is the biggest of its kind to be held in Asia. Organised jointly by the National School of Drama (NSD), Natarang Pratishthan and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), it will have performances by 20 troupes from around Asia, followed by interactions among directors about issues of common concern. NSD project director and theatre person Kirti Jain spoke with Swati Chopra:
How did the idea for a woman-centric theatre festival originate?
Poorva is the result of a personal search by women directors. The idea took form when many of us noticed commonalities between our work and started figuring them out. For instance, the actor-director relationship, so crucial in a play, takes on a different quality under a woman director. This might be so because being rooted in their families, women tend to encourage collaborative work. So, Natarang Pratishthan and NSD got together to give women directors a chance to throw up ideas and look at each other's work. Mind you, we are not being exclusivist. We just want to look at our own work and examine it.
Which countries are participating here?
Delegates from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan, and India will participate in the festival. We conceptualised a gathering of Asian women directors because in many ways, they share similar political and cultural realities. Most Asian countries have been colonised and are dealing with western influences. We wanted to examine these, and whether there is some such thing as an 'Asian aesthetic'.
What do you mean by 'Asian aesthetics'?
The question of identity is very important in contemporary theatre. In India, 30-35 years ago, there was a move to de-colonise the arts by returning to the roots. Experiments were made to interact consciously with tradition and thereby evolve a new, enriched language for theatre. Early examples were Vijay Tendulkar's 'Ghasiram Kotwal', Satish Alekar's 'Begum Barve', among others. Directors routinely incorporated elements from Shakespeare and Brecht. Now, traditional influences are so ingrained in us that we use them unconsciously. For instance, a popular technique we often borrow from traditional Indian theatre is creation of locale through dialogue - something that is impossible in realistic theatre. So, in a sense, we have evolved an 'Indian aesthetic' in theatre.
What we want to examine in Poorva is whether a similar aesthetic has evolved in other parts of Asia as well. Does contemporary Japanese theatre, for instance, use elements of the country's traditional theatre? Is there such a thing as an Asian theatrical entity? We hope to find answers to some of these questions.
What are the other issues before Poorva?
We also want to examine whether the vocabulary of women's work is different, and whether there is need for a separate language to critique their work. These issues will be debated at the conference after the theatre festival. It will provide a forum to 60 directors, actors, scholars and artists from all over Asia to take part in discussions informed by the productions showcased during the festival.
How different is Asian women's theatre from its counterpart in the West?
I think the two cannot be equated since the women's movement has been very strong in the West. So the debate is more advanced there as compared to Asia. As for India, because of the freedom of expression that theatre has enjoyed here, it has become varied and complex. In many other Asian countries, women's theatre has been a tool of activism, protest and for fighting oppressive regimes. So they articulate issues of gender and repression better than us. Especially exhilarating has been the experience of meeting young Asian women directors. They are tremendously aware and bright, but we have kept them out of this festival. But we do have as observers young Asian Americans sent by the Ford Foundation.
Why is Poorva restricted to only a certain generation of women directors?
We had to limit the festival by keeping out the pioneers as well as the younger generation because we needed to have a certain focus. The pioneers had to fight male hegemony in a way that we didn't. For us, the ground had already been cleared, so we had the freedom to explore. The younger lot is excluded because we needed a chance to put our own work in perspective and talk about it.
How does the Indian women's theatre movement react to TV soaps and their culture of conformism?
This is what happens in rightist regimes, where agendas are pushed through every available media avenue. The move towards conformity, symbolised by the sindoor and karvachauth wave in Indian TV, is disturbing. But one takes heart from the exemplary courage and commitment to change displayed by rural women, who are willing to give up their lives for what they believe in. Where they have been sufficiently mobilised, these women are using street theatre to voice their concerns. So two contrary movements are happening simultaneously.
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