At Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, with each new performance, we can observe the coming together of the mechanics of performance, the culture and distinct sensibility of a venue, and the manner in which a finite space with fixed dimensions can be re-invented almost infinitely. This makes each evening at the theatre a unique experience. The changes can be physical: with sets, actors, and audiences; of light, sound and fury — or it can be of the senses, fleetingly subtle. In the middle of a scene, a very simple shift of emotions can be affected. Sometimes, there isn’t even a flurry to announce it, but it can signify great things — an impasse in time, the moving forward of a generation, or moving history. This can be experienced in most venues, but at Prithvi, that single transfiguring moment is magnified by the intimacy of a space thrust right into the audience, fed to the lions as it were, even if it is genteel gatherings that are more the order of the day. On a good day, the venue can seat roughly 180 visitors who watch as unfettered emotions unfurl on stage. They’ve got a ringside view of the sacrifice each performance claims, as actors give away a little bit of themselves each time they walk that familiar stretch.
In good form
Over the years, we would like to think that people have come up to speed with the goods of theatre even if they haven’t yet acquired the tag of being especially discerning. They have only just about started to switch off their phones, but at least two or three devices go off customarily each night, and there are several that flash on during a performance. In time, audiences may well know their Beckett from their Brecht, or indeed, their Karnad from their Tendulkar, but for now they are partial to compulsive standing ovations, which must be taken with a pinch of salt. However, when you look around, you realise that this undiscerning appreciation is a function of pure democracy. As liquid finds its own level, each play manages to steer itself to the demographic it owns. In spirit, Prithvi seeks to celebrate the medium of theatre, to support it, patronise it, and not trample to the ground anyone’s aspirations or pretensions. Effort is worth much more than the results. This has rubbed on to the audiences most certainly.
Even actors are not immune to it. The applause is special each time, they hang on to each clap, every whoop of delight. Backstage at one of those rambling ensemble productions that boast casts of 20 comers, the actors linger in the dark, waiting for their cues to take the stage, but with their ears cropped up, listening in to the audience, and how they react to each missive of humour. Here, gestures are more important than nuance. There should be an audible gasp when one is warranted, over-awed cheers when an actor reaches the end of her tether negotiating an aria, and peals of laughter when a rustic singer calls out for a paramour with a refrain in his inimitable style. If these moments fall short, and there isn’t an audible response then the audience is deemed flat. Silence can somehow never signify approbation, but if you would only look through the crack in the curtain, the faces would still seem transfixed in a kind of mass hypnosis, and that should count for something.
Commendation and condemnation
Post show, the actors look forward to visitors in the green room. They may be in a state of undress, or have faces smudged with hastily removed make-up, or crumbs from a crumpet stationed on the upper reaches of their two-day stubble, but they’ll be eager to have their names called up. Most of the time, the naysayers slink away — the green room isn’t the place for remonstrations. In any case, criticism isn’t really welcome in the world of experimental theatre that takes so much from its performers, that morale must always be kept at a premium. These same standards are not really applied to the applauders, who are welcomed with outstretched arms, and open hearts. After having spent two hours on your feet, without slipping out of character even for a second, a simple ‘congratulations’ works a charm.
In the Gujarati circuit, actors are handed cheques of money, flowers and bouquets. Here in this miniature world of bijou-sized entertainment, but larger-than-life emotions, it’s understandable that actors may want to hold on to the memory of having a visitor’s eyes well up with tears because of some unfathomable identification with a character’s predicament, that a writer may have only flippantly inscribed. The usual gush of compliments may be clichés, tried-and-tested praise from guide books, but to an actor it is still of immeasurable value.
Theatre cannot be insular, because it yearns to be related to, to be understood, to transcend boundaries. Once a connection has been made, it is an undeniable one. There is power wielded by every performer, and every production, that has been painstakingly mounted. Perhaps, the ambiguity of applause is something we must live with, take it at face value on some occasions, with a pinch of salt at others, and we can never dismiss it entirely. In turn, the audience will latch on to every word, every enunciation, every glimmer of expression with all the concentration they can muster. For people-watchers especially, at the beginning, when everybody is plunged into darkness, the announcement that phones must be switched off is met with the countless lighting up of faces as audience members struggle to tame their newfangled devices. It is perhaps the light design of a different kind of play, one in which we can all participate.
