It takes quite a lot to understand the relationship between Theatre and Cinema. For most parts they share an interchangeability which is very difficult to pattern or trace. for most parts it a dynamic which moves back and forth at all times.
In India Cinema largely means Bollywood, and Bollywood happens to be a different ball game all together. It could be considered blasphemous or a complete tamasha or maybe the most effective way of making riches but at the end of the day it remains to be the most magnimous and enimatic representative of mass culture.
whats interesting to note is how much it borrows and gives back to Theatre. In Mumbai as much as the rest of the country Bollywood is so big that it takes away a lot of attention from theatre. people watch movies as a part of the discipline but not plays. so they are willing to spend 200 bucks on a multiplex ticket but wouldnt invest that much for a theatre performance.
Most actors start off from the stage as a launching base to eventually enter into main stream cinema. Acclaimed actors like Om puri, Pankaj Kapoor, and Irfan Khan who graduated from the National School Of Drama and made it big in bollywood never turned back to theatre again.
Likewise there are other established actors who have kept their dedication towards Theatre as one of the main priorities in their lives and careers. Naseeruddin Shah for that matter is a great example. The actor's theatre group Motley has over the years been staging some wonderfull narratives and short stories ranging from Beckett with who it first started out to Jerom Kitty and also to some of our most gifted, home grown authors like Ismat Chughtai and Minto.
On a very informal conversation with Imaad Shah who happens to be the flag bearer for the future of the group, he explained that " if asked about making preferrences between films and theatre as a career for future, i really dont want to make a choice, because it then seems restrictive" and then on other notes amidst conversations he recalls his first role play in one of the group's earliest performances and how vividly he remembers it.
whether or not Theatre is a poor man's art, whether films are merely business,would be a never ending conversation but the scope and viewership of the two are entirely different. A film can be and needs to be pitched to a million audience, the very nature of it allows that kind of an interaction, a play on the other hand is live, is real and needs the involvement of its audience and therefore cannot have large numbers of it. therefore a play can never make as much money a film does.
Thus Theatre can never be thought in terms gaining large profits. but in a world where everything is cost verified and comes along with a prize tag, thriving and surviving of such an old tradition throught it and through the every changing roles of life seems to be difficult.
yet there always will be people who would come and in their time revive it, galvanize it or adapt into a newer life.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Art, Theatre and Literature are such spheres which give infinite space for an emotion, an expression or a thought to evolve in its own uniqueness. Perhaps these are the only spaces in our tangible world where there is no definitive or limitting conformity. but interestingly, one of the greatest hurdle that modern theatre especially English and Hindi theatre faces today is the dirth of originality. There is very little original playwriting and scripting in theatre today. Most plays are enacted either verbatim or are adaptations of short stories and classics.
"when it started out with people like Alyque Padamsee, the English stage hosted plays which were direct transcriptions from Shakespeare, Rand, Tennesse williams etc. unchanged in form and content". says Pronoti Datta, journalist, Time Out Magazine.
The scenario changed when in the late 90's Rahul DaCunha and the Rage group came up with their play I am Not Bajirao. adapted from Herb Gardener's I am not Rappaport. that later on became hugely successful and most importantly paved the way for 'Indian English Theatre'. for the first time the audiences connected with the story and also the language which was more colloqual.
and since then Mumbai has been a city which has seen some very good theatre, There has always been a lot of activity in it and even greater now with more and more young people taking interest in it. But sadly there is unanimous agreement among all the Thetrewallas about the ever increasing depletion of good and original content.
People are skeptical of experimentation fearing that their plays wont run. "given the present compititive conditions with commercial stuff working so well with the audience, there is very little scope for serious and experimental theatre" says eminent playwright Ramu Ramanathan.
Even when there is so much of interest and involvement amongst the youngters, most of them join popular and established groups under famous names instead of starting their own groups or ventures therefore end up being molded into a gregarious lot.
Also the viwership has changed majorly over the years and with the coming of the digital era it is continually changing towards being a very complex dynamic of demand and supply.
"It is tough." says Ramanathan " The playwright is being treated like any other writer ... Plays are expected to offer more professional content. The writing has to have a bit of everything from Borges to Bollywood and from Rabindranath to Rap. With YouTube and dvd libraries and Barkha Dutts and iPods, audiences are demanding more on-demand entertainment choices than ever before. Forget about the well-made play or absurdist angst, the playwright is having to provide "adrenalin pumping contextual excitement".
but of course there are steps and initiatives being taken at major levels. one of the foremost being The Writer's Bloc project started in 2002 by the members of the Rage group, Shernaz Patel, Rahul da Cunha and Rajit kapoor. it is an endevour which encourages new playwrights to come up and gain visibility. The first festival of Writer's bloc staged plays made by participants in a series of work shops conducted by the group and the London Based Royal Court theatre Company. The second Writer's Bloc festival took place in 2007. The initiative has produced 22 new plays including the well acclaimed The President Is Coming.
Money and budget stipulations are one of the major issues which cause a setback to new and creative ventures. Most theatre veterans feel that plays cant be done for money, that there is a total disentanglement between passion and benefit.
My personal thought on this would be that it all begins with and trickles down to the same classic dilemma of " whether Theatre and cinema is fundamentally about art or entertainment". one could say that it is really a matter of personal choice and perception, but in a world which is continually slipping into the hands of vigorous consumerism, and where perception is becoming an incompresible space of convinience and the need for moderation. this question although incapable of being resolved needs to be thought of deeply.
"when it started out with people like Alyque Padamsee, the English stage hosted plays which were direct transcriptions from Shakespeare, Rand, Tennesse williams etc. unchanged in form and content". says Pronoti Datta, journalist, Time Out Magazine.
The scenario changed when in the late 90's Rahul DaCunha and the Rage group came up with their play I am Not Bajirao. adapted from Herb Gardener's I am not Rappaport. that later on became hugely successful and most importantly paved the way for 'Indian English Theatre'. for the first time the audiences connected with the story and also the language which was more colloqual.
and since then Mumbai has been a city which has seen some very good theatre, There has always been a lot of activity in it and even greater now with more and more young people taking interest in it. But sadly there is unanimous agreement among all the Thetrewallas about the ever increasing depletion of good and original content.
People are skeptical of experimentation fearing that their plays wont run. "given the present compititive conditions with commercial stuff working so well with the audience, there is very little scope for serious and experimental theatre" says eminent playwright Ramu Ramanathan.
Even when there is so much of interest and involvement amongst the youngters, most of them join popular and established groups under famous names instead of starting their own groups or ventures therefore end up being molded into a gregarious lot.
Also the viwership has changed majorly over the years and with the coming of the digital era it is continually changing towards being a very complex dynamic of demand and supply.
"It is tough." says Ramanathan " The playwright is being treated like any other writer ... Plays are expected to offer more professional content. The writing has to have a bit of everything from Borges to Bollywood and from Rabindranath to Rap. With YouTube and dvd libraries and Barkha Dutts and iPods, audiences are demanding more on-demand entertainment choices than ever before. Forget about the well-made play or absurdist angst, the playwright is having to provide "adrenalin pumping contextual excitement".
but of course there are steps and initiatives being taken at major levels. one of the foremost being The Writer's Bloc project started in 2002 by the members of the Rage group, Shernaz Patel, Rahul da Cunha and Rajit kapoor. it is an endevour which encourages new playwrights to come up and gain visibility. The first festival of Writer's bloc staged plays made by participants in a series of work shops conducted by the group and the London Based Royal Court theatre Company. The second Writer's Bloc festival took place in 2007. The initiative has produced 22 new plays including the well acclaimed The President Is Coming.
Money and budget stipulations are one of the major issues which cause a setback to new and creative ventures. Most theatre veterans feel that plays cant be done for money, that there is a total disentanglement between passion and benefit.
My personal thought on this would be that it all begins with and trickles down to the same classic dilemma of " whether Theatre and cinema is fundamentally about art or entertainment". one could say that it is really a matter of personal choice and perception, but in a world which is continually slipping into the hands of vigorous consumerism, and where perception is becoming an incompresible space of convinience and the need for moderation. this question although incapable of being resolved needs to be thought of deeply.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
One of the greatest difficulties perhaps is to articulate about things and experiences you deeply feel for. It is like articulating Love, thinking of a head, feet or toe for it. When you do try sometimes words come up and some times you make circles around the same vague thoughts in vain.
Studying and writing about theatre at such a brief quarter has been some where on those lines for me.
It was a world i did not know, and i imagined that one day when the magic casket opens it will be a revelation.
"whatever that deeply intrigues you, you dive into it, not to skim the surfaces but plunge head long" said a very wise aquintance to me once.
But in time findings take their due course, meandering all over the place, through various meanings and implications. never steady, never stopping.
And for me too, Theatre came away from being an abstract sphere of imagination to something more real, believable. I saw people who live by it, create and portray it day over day over day.
i have always been in awe of actors, i think acting is one of the most difficult things to do, to be someone else when your not sure what it is that lies beneath your own skin. yet they do it with such creativity and confidence, so skillfully that there is no scope for ambiguity.
In the end, much of the hysteria has died down but quriosity and interest hasnt, infact it has grown ten fold. where i stand now it doesnt remain to be an analogy, it is a discovery and i am only in the beginning of it.
Studying and writing about theatre at such a brief quarter has been some where on those lines for me.
It was a world i did not know, and i imagined that one day when the magic casket opens it will be a revelation.
"whatever that deeply intrigues you, you dive into it, not to skim the surfaces but plunge head long" said a very wise aquintance to me once.
But in time findings take their due course, meandering all over the place, through various meanings and implications. never steady, never stopping.
And for me too, Theatre came away from being an abstract sphere of imagination to something more real, believable. I saw people who live by it, create and portray it day over day over day.
i have always been in awe of actors, i think acting is one of the most difficult things to do, to be someone else when your not sure what it is that lies beneath your own skin. yet they do it with such creativity and confidence, so skillfully that there is no scope for ambiguity.
In the end, much of the hysteria has died down but quriosity and interest hasnt, infact it has grown ten fold. where i stand now it doesnt remain to be an analogy, it is a discovery and i am only in the beginning of it.
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