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Theatre for the middle class
"PAREEKSHA" HAS stood the test of time. The alternative Tamil theatre group is celebrating its silver jubilee this year. On March 9, it will flag off its year-long festival of plays with "Vattam," the Tamil adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle", at the auditorium of Dr. MGR-Janaki College of Arts and Science for Women.
In these 25 years, the group has presented the work of leading Indian playwrights as also those of Brecht, Harold Pinter and J. B. Priestley.
Among the Indian playwrights, the plays of Badal Sircar, Vijay Tendulkar, and Ranjith Roy Choudhry have been staged. Indira Parthasarathy, Na. Muthuswami, Sundra Ramaswami, Ashoka Mitran, Ambai, Sujatha, Jeyanthan, Dilip Kumar and C. N. Annadurai are among the many Tamil writers represented.
During this year, Tamil theatre enthusiasts will get to see a dozen plays in all. The donor pass for the whole year totally for these 12 plays is Rs. 100 while students are offered a concession (Rs. 75). Individual shows are ticketed at Rs. 20 while students pay Rs. 10.
Jnani, journalist, documentary filmmaker and the founder-director of Pareeksha, talks to this correspondent about his passion for theatre and Pareeksha's journey:
Does your involvement in theatre go back a long way?
Yes, from childhood days. I studied in the St. Joseph's School, Chingleput. Director Sridhar and Nasser were also students of this school, which has a tradition of producing plays. Every class from Std. VI would put up a play for the annual day celebrations. I retained my interest in the theatre as a student of the Madras Christian College at Tambaram, and later joined The Indian Express as a reporter. I switched to Tamil journalism to reach out to more people.
What led to the founding of Pareeksha?
In T. Nagar, I lived close to writer Ashokamitran's house. And got to know him well. He introduced me to Na. Muthuswamy. Koothu-p-pattarai had been started then but it was not a performing group. Its purpose was to introduce city audiences to Koothu and evolve a modern medium. I differed from Muthuswamy who felt that artistes should work full time in the theatre while I saw it as an effort by amateurs. I gained a lot by attending the first modern theatre workshop conducted in Tamil Nadu by Prof. Ramanujam at the Gandhigram Rural Institute in 1977, and founded Pareeksha soon after.
Pareeksha declared that its aim was "to liberate the middle class from its false beliefs about both theatre and life" - a rather tall aim, wasn't it?
You know how it is when one is just 24. You want to proclaim to the world what you want to do," he laughs. "Our audience is the middle class. And the middle class does have a skewed approach to life. It is caught between the cultures of the rich and the poor; it is unable to shed its false beliefs and wants to be upwardly mobile. Plays can kindle introspection, which is why we choose the classics and meaningful plays. We also want to dispel its illusion that theatre is just a stringing together of jokes.
Why are you opposed to institutional support and grants?
We don't believe in institutional funding whether foreign or Indian. Funding just one production does not help theatre. All corporate sectors and funding agencies should build infrastructural facilities so that all theatre groups are benefited. Koothu-p-pattarai could get full time players, an achievement, with funding from the mid-Eighties. Now it is coming to a stop and they are at a crossroads. Grants also come with hidden terms which make you deviate from the way you want to do theatre.
So how do you manage as you have ticketed the shows so reasonably?
We believe that audience support alone can sustain theatre. Our first play, Indira Parthasarathy's "Porvai Porthiya Udalgal" was priced at Rs. 2 a ticket. We also believe in a single rate for everyone. The rent of the Museum theatre then was Rs. 500, which left us with a small sum for production costs. Today the same theatre costs Rs. 10,000! I want each play for the silver jubilee festival to cost just Rs. 5,000, as this is amateur theatre. Dr. MGR-Janaki College is charging us only Rs. 500 a day.
Why did Pareeksha lose its momentum?
We staged a play every two months. We were the first to perform Muthuswamy's "Naarkalikarar". Koothu-p-pattarai became a performing group only two years later. For our first anniversary, we staged "Evam Indrajit" which was translated into Tamil by Rajaram. This was followed by Tendulkar's "Kamala". We started a street theatre group, `Veedhi' simultaneously but the group became defunct as it was becoming too political.
After the Eighties, Pareeksha's momentum came down. Rehearsal space was a problem and our members also moved to other cities owing to transfers in their jobs. We used to rehearse on the beach and playgrounds. But gradually, the State machinery became rigid and anti-social elements also increased. So we couldn't use these public spaces any more. Even today, rehearsal space is a major problem for most theatre groups.
But you put up weekly theatre in the early Nineties...
Other groups - Yavanika, Aadukalam and Aikya - collaborated with us from 1992-93 and we put up a play every week at the Narada Gana Sabha mini auditorium which charged us only Rs. 100 a play. Komal Swaminathan's Subhamangala theatre festival also gave the impetus for participation of more groups in theatre.
How did you get involved in campus productions?
I trained NSS students of the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in street theatre for two years under the suggestion of the then Vice Chancellor Ms.Vasanthi Devi. I later did workshops with the students of the Women's Christian College. "A Play without a Name and "Vattam" were directed by me and staged by the students. I think schools should also begin producing more plays. Pareeksha plans to organise a children's theatre workshop in May and stage a play.
Is there not a substantial increase in the number of women artistes in Tamil theatre than in the past?
When Pareeksha was started, it was extremely difficult to find a woman artiste to play a role. Now there are so many that it is very heartening.
And is there not a trend towards staging plays in Tamil both within the campus and outside?
It is kind of inevitable. The composition of the campus has changed. More students from the rural areas are coming into city colleges now and they bring their Tamil with them. Just like the villages are getting urbanised, cities are also getting `ruralised.' Could we have imagined the Alliance Francaise presenting a play titled, "Minnal Ravi" 20 years ago? Troupes such as Magic Lantern are now bi-lingual.
How do you make the plays from other languages and cultures relevant to the Tamil milieu?
We have always adapted the works to our milieu as in "Vattam". "Balloon," which was written by me, also did the same with an American play on anti-Vietnam war protests.
As for a bridge between the mainstream and the parallel theatre in Tamil, I think Pareeksha is trying to do this. No one in the middle class can complain that it does not communicate to them and our plays are also not like the Sabha ones.
KAUSALYA SANTHANAM
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