Theatre, alive

GOWRI RAMNARAYAN

"Bing-bing-bing-bing!" the word was swiftly passed round the circle when, suddenly, someone shouted "Bong!" That was the signal for the bings to go on in an anti clockwise race until someone made a wrong move.

"OUT!" shrieked the gang, and the girl hopped out as the bing- bongs ping-ponged again.

No, this was not a party game, though every participant was obviously having a very good time. It was a lesson in concentration, alertness, and making sharp eye contact on the stage. Some of the "games" taught you how to handle pauses and silences on the stage, which are more difficult than speech. Some of the exercises were physically strenuous, others called for mental agility.

Though Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, is no stranger to drama workshops, its last annual theatre festival (15 November - 5 December 2000) focussed as much on workshops as on the stage shows. There was plenty of variety, as the repertories from India, Ireland, U.S, U.K, South Africa and Italy staging the festival plays, were all pressed into service for the morning training sessions.

Aren't you surprised to know that for every workshop 150-200 people competed for 25 places?

A variety of skills was taught. The Telluride Repertory (U.S) trained 15 members to play the chorus in "Nosferatu", their stage production "Nosferatu", based on the Dracula legend. The Big Telly Company from Northern Ireland taught ways of using sounds and physical movements for storytelling. On the last day, actor Paul McEneaney's breathing and voice training exercises were tried out with great relish. (Some local theatre specialists grumbled that these were nothing new, they had been teaching them to their groups for years. But the participants retorted that "foreign theatre persons have a whole range of techniques and literature behind the teaching which gives them assurance and authority."

Big Telly's last day had dumb charades with a difference. The four sub-groups had five minutes to shape themselves into a tableau which would raise the question, "What happens next?" Nearly all the scenes visualised violent vignettes (predictable for us, surprising to the visitors!) One of them depicted a communal riot with corpses and assassins, but also a woman raising her eyes and hands in prayer - a pool of quietness beside the frenetic. Another freeze had an endangered animal striving to hide behind a tree as a photographer from the National Geographic channel recorded its existence!

We had a veritable storm of action accompanied by a verbal deluge, when the super-energetic clown Barrington Powell burst into the hall to run through (quite literally!) the history of European theatre. He had the whole group rushing to each corner of the hall behind him. At the first halt he bellowed, "This is ancient Greece where it all began with-" and the listeners shouted back, "Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides!" The next spot was "Rome!" with its Commedia Dell'arte; then came England where Shakespeare ruled supreme. Finally, we came to Brecht. Powell explained how the invention of photography revolutionised the way we look at things, whipping out his camera to take our pictures!

(Don't you wonder - as I did - what would happen if our own history teachers adopt these methods?)

The most demanding effort went into workshops conducted by theatre director Veenapani Chawla and her Adishakti repertory. "Emotion, thought, action, interaction, everything has its own movement," Chawla explained. "And every movement has a breath pattern. If you understand that principle, you can speak, act and emote effectively." The participants were asked to verbalise some state of mind or action, which was translated into drum beats to illustrate the flow of emotion, its modulation and points of emphasis. In the room upstairs saxophonist Pascal Sieger taught circular breathing, and exercises in articulation. "Find the rhythm in the text and expand on that," he said. He used musical instruments to underscore his points. The basement saw Vinay Kumar making his group bark and wail, scream and whisper...

The workshop I enjoyed most was with Hugh Brown and Dearbhla McNally from Belfast who shared their unusual skills in stilt walking, fire swinging and juggling.

Actor and model Suhail Khan says that such workshops make him "more conscious about the use of body language, speech and evoking emotions." Rohit Sagar says, "Workshops introduce you to different methods. You must absorb and adapt, develop your own methods to suit your needs." The older Rajinder Kaur is an established TV serial actor (Hindi/Punjabi) "I've come straight after shooting all night. I am learning so much here that I don't feel tired."

Watching young people getting excited as they learnt new skills was a refreshing experience. I too put pen and paper aside to try out some of those activities, to get a hands on feel of what was being demontrated. That's how work became play. After all, isn't theatre just another name for magic?

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