It’s almost impossible to not squirm impatiently in your seat when you watch Bhanu Bharti’s “Tamasha Na Hua”; almost impossible to stay silent. As the characters debate and argue on stage, each thread they pick up is all too familiar, each question reminiscent of countless heated debates in drawing rooms and coffee houses. Each turn the conversation takes provokes and aggravates, stirs and questions, and you want to join in, lending your voice to a discussion that feels too current to be have been scripted four years ago. Written and directed by Bharti, “Tamasha Na Hua”, performed by Aaj Theatre Company for the ongoing 17th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, is hardly conventional theatre, and explores multiple issues that concern the world today.
Excerpts from an interview with the playwright-director:
In 2011, you wrote the play on the occasion of Tagore’s 150th anniversary, and “Tamasha Na Hua” which takes off from Tagore’s “Muktdhara”, begins with a discussion on Tagore and his ideologies, in the context of today.
In 2011, everyone was talking of Tagore, his plays were being done and the government was sponsoring events on Tagore. Even I was asked to do a Tagore play. I remembered “Muktdhara”, which I had read long back. I wondered if it was still relevant. I was not really very sure. I reread it and realised that as it is, the play doesn’t hold good. That set me thinking of the problems the play raises, and the challenges that face theatre and society today, including the fragmentation of society that keeps bothering us in theatre. Theatre is a social art and can’t be practised by individuals in isolation. When I started writing, “Muktdhara” became a reference point. The juxtaposition between “Muktdhara” and the present time is constantly there, and in the process you come across the relevance of Tagore. The play doesn’t just remain “Muktdhara”, it builds further on that, and it revisits Tagore, Gandhi, Marx and all the past movements like Romanticism and Industrialisation, examining all that in context of today’s reality.
You see, from people like Tagore and Gandhi, we have inherited a legacy that we cannot deny. They are very much a part of the Indian psyche. Modern India is built on the fragments and legacy of those ideologies.
But the play questions the idea of accepting these ideologies as they are… The cast abandons the rehearsal for “Muktdhara” when the question of the play’s relevance comes up.
In Tagore’s time, the kings and princes were reality. They are no longer so. Even I have no memories of those feudal times, though for my father it was real. I was born in ’47, my experience of kings was seeing them lose money, selling their properly, a different kind of experience altogether. The idea of Tagore’s ideologies has some truth today, but some truth only. We have reached a point in our civilisation where we need a big breakthrough. We can’t solely depend on the ideas that came to us from our ancestors in the 20th Century. Of course, it cannot happen in a vacuum. We will have to build on the foundation of the past. But even Gandhi is not the complete answer.
We may talk about past ideologies and movements, but we cannot live with these ideas today. If we have to make use of those ideas in our times, we have to re-realise and re-invite them for our own times, the way Gandhi did it. Gandhi himself said that his ideas were nothing new, that those thoughts were as old as mountains. He reinvented them for his own times. We have reached a stage where we can’t just copy these ideas. We have to research and reinvent them, for our own times.
On stage, each opinionis voiced by a different character, but while you were writing it, you had to play all of them yourselves. Considering each opinion is a stark contrast to the other, how difficult was it fairly represent each one?
That’s the beauty of it. As it is, we are debating these issues in our drawing rooms, with ourselves, with others. The best thing about this play is that what I say from one standpoint, and then its exact opposite, both are equally true. You cannot just say that any one point of view is wrong. So, the beauty or tragedy of our time is that from where you stand, and from what you see, you think you are correct, but from an opposite angle, the entire view changes and still remains true.
And considering these are very real issues we grapple with every day, you must have your own personal belief about each of them…
My personal belief is that we have reached a point in human civilisation where we need a very big breakthrough, in terms of ideas, and in order to concede our own reality, which has become so fluid that it’s changing constantly. So we have to come to a grasp of it, which is very difficult and needs a big genius. We can’t turn to an old ideology. We can’t go to Tagore or Marx or Gandhi and expect to get a tailor made suit which we can wear today.
There is a kind of fluid spontaneity to the entire conversation on stage. While writing it, was it the same? Did you build as you wrote?
I didn’t know the direction at all. If I had had a predetermined idea of my own, and felt like there was one particular thing I had to say, then the play wouldn’t have come alive the way it comes alive. It would become a school debate. In the play, the characters have their own viewpoint, but they keep shifting. Sometimes they come together, sometimes they are opponents.
The thing is, there are certain things everyone can comprehend and are common, and certain things pertain to philosophy which all actors are not familiar with. I told the actors that unless to you are compelled to answer an argument, don’t say it. Don’t be in a hurry to come out with your dialogue. Listen and ponder over what the other is saying. The idea of cultivating a dialogue was very important. Problem and debate are very much a part of theatre, they lead to action, without which, what would be the point of theatre? That dialogue and interaction is how we evolve and change. If the dialogue is not there, then nothing will change.
Do you think theatre today is debating and challenging as much as it should?
I am a reluctant writer, I prefer if someone else writes the play and I direct it. But the thing is, with most of the plays today I’m not happy. I keep reading lots of scripts, directing plays, but nothing satisfies me. I feel like they are too simplistic, they want to reach an easy conclusion, or they lack in the craft, and the artistic merits. Most of the times when I watch a play, I come out dissatisfied. It doesn’t engage me, at an intellectual and deeper plane. It should stir something inside you, change you as a person. If it doesn’t alter me, if I come out the way I had walked in, why should I waste my time?
While this play’s approach is to stay closer to reality, in your previous plays, like “Andha Yug” and “Tughlaq”, you have used an entirely different approach, one that brings in the distance from reality.
If I was doing “Muktdhara” only, it would immediately alienate the audience to a certain extent. I did “Andha Yug” at the in Ferozeshah Kotla ruins not just like that. I made people walk all that distance, so the audience would feel themselves entering another time, and when they saw the characters, they would already be in a state of mind which would put that distance between what was happening in front of them and their present-day reality. They’d also see how this reality has affected us and still holds good over our own time. In that way the alienation also helps. There are certain things where you need to be go at a distance to look at the complete the picture and understand. And then sometimes you have to come closer to understand. But both kinds of plays can tell you about your situation today.
