Breaking down walls with theatre

"Theatre is a performance or expression of human thoughts, feeling, experience and its purpose," says theatre personality Manjul Bhardwaj whose Theatre of Relevance (ToR) completed 25 years earlier this year. "Throughout history, artistic processes and reflection have worked like blotting paper, soaking up the poison of hate that is unleashed."

A three-day festival this week marked the theatre group's two-and-half decade journey, with plays including Garbh (about the invisible cocoon of nationalism, racism, religion, and caste being woven around us), Anhad Naad – Unheard Sounds of Universe (on the commodification of art and artistes) and Nyaya ke Bhanwar me Bhawari (challenging patriarchy) being staged in Mumbai.

Bigotry, exclusion and gender issues have always been at the center of ToR productions. For years, Theatre of Relevance has taken on themes such as child labour, female foeticide, living with HIV/AIDS and other subjects of social import. Their impact can be gauged by the fact that the group has been invited to conduct workshops across India as well as in Singapore and Germany. 

"Since 1990, an era of irrelevance seems to have begun. This is an era of monopolies, dictatorships and oligarchies, which limit science to technology; a period where the media, instead of being faithful to its audience, is servile to the rulers. This also creates a massive need for a platform to voice people's concerns," says Bhardwaj.

The 53-year-old laughs at the notion that only the gifted or talented can be in theatre. "The National School of Drama and other formal institutions select just a handful (of people). This flies in the face of thousands of years of theatre tradition of this land, which survives in our folk genres. I have made destitute and challenged people act in my plays, who have not only wowed audiences but found the experience therapeutic as well."

Bhardwaj says many artistes find it difficult to stay relevant and responsible to society while pursuing art because they forget its roots as a medium of constructive change and/or development, and as a way of living and empowerment. According to him, the naysayers perpetrate several myths to keep going, chief among which is the conflation of auditorium with theatre. "An auditorium is a venue for performance. It is not theatre. It is a mere component," he says. "For me, even one performer and just one audience member are enough. Wherever these two meet, theatre starts. The medium is not a slave to a particularly designed auditorium or stage. That is a construct which creates walls, and theatre as a medium is about breaking down walls."

Most of Theatre of Relevance's productions are independent of sets, lights and backstage production support. Bhardwaj views these as handicaps that have come to us as Western influences. "My actors are my props. If they are unable to touch the audience's soul, then everything else is useless. If they do, then why do we need them?" For this, he draws the audience into the creative process. "I want them (to be) involved in writing, acting, and directing," he says, citing the instance of his play Door Se Kisine Awaz Di. Performed in the middle of communally sensitive areas at the height of the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, he says audiences would be so moved that they'd mouth the lines, highlighting their own follies in being played by politicians. "That is the richness, power and essence of theatre."