“Welcome to Rangashankara, please switch your mobile phones so that there is no disturbance during the performance.” These are the unforgettable, opening lines for anyone who has watched a play at Rangashankara, delivered by the late playwright-actor Girish Karnad. Ironically, in the COVID world, it is through the mobile phone that the audience mostly watches digital play screenings. Theatres are shut, curtains haven’t gone up, vanity lights are switched off and the audience has deserted the auditorium.
Arundhati Nag’s Rangashankara, one of the most vibrant theatre spaces not just in Bangalore, but in India, wears a desolate look. Bustling with people at all times of the day, and with theatre happening six days a week, it has been over four months since a play was staged. In a conversation, Arundhati Nag, speaks of these unprecedented times, and what it means to her as an actor and as someone running a theatre space.
Photo: K. Murali Kumar
Rangashankara, a theatre space that is so vibrant, has been closed for four months now. Dealing with closure initially may have been about refund requests, fresh dates etc. The impact of the lockdown is more serious now, it is gone beyond the theatre space in a sense.
Foremost, we have completely shut operations, there is no activity. Not for profit organisations like ours are never in surplus money. But we have survived well. Now, there are no shows, no sponsorships. It is a situation so overwhelming we don’t even know what to do. Each time we plan to reopen, there is another lockdown. We are completely inundated with information, like COVID is the only thing happening in this world.
Having said that, for Rangashankara it has also been questioning time. What are institutions like Rangashankara for? What is its role? Since I am driving the car currently, I think what are the signals of stability we can give the community? All that we have been able to do is reach out to groups of people, to ask them what they would want to do in a post-Covid world? Is there a new way of performance they are thinking of?
I have been someone who has opposed the digital route. I believe that the real thing is the real thing. But I have come to realise that there is no turning a blind eye to technology. We could not resist electricity, nor could we do it to microphones. It is time again to get clever and manipulative and use this new medium to our advantage. That is what Rangashankara is doing right now, actively; it is open heartedly engaging with anything that looks like a possibility of connecting with the community.
Can you speak about this community that has had a strong relationship with Rangashankara for the last 15 years?
It is amateur theatre that has been keeping this space vibrant. Out of 400 shows every year at Rangashankara, the bulk of it is performed by amateur theatre groups who do it out of passion. We haven’t upped our rent, we have kept it at Rs. 2500. So if they make Rs. 5000, they can pay the rent, pay for idli-coffee, pay the make-up man and the carpenter. They feel very happy that they were able to perform Karnad, Sophocles or Shakespeare. That community is waiting to come back, it is a large contingent of theatre people. They are not dependent on theatre for their livelihoods.
I believe amateur theatre community is such an intangible wealth – both in terms of what they give and what they get. Nobody can give it a price. When human beings attach value without being commercially worried, it is very precious. That is the safety valve of theatre, and Rangashankara is that safety valve. All cultural spaces should take ideas up the aesthetic ladder. Well, we can question content. But we have stopped having theatre of great content for a while now. I am hopeful it will come back.
What you’ve said so far is as someone who runs a theatre space. How do you feel as an actor? An artmaker builds bridges with humanity, in many ways, he holds together the social and cultural fabric.
The actor has a very intense relationship with the world. It is his very life. This is the only way I know to live after having spent 45 years of my life performing. Suddenly it has become an impossibility. In just about a month after the lockdown, I began to feel a withdrawal. But that has not happened to the audience yet. They are living the routine of fear in their everyday lives, and have had no time to miss theatre. Music is still accessible, but theatre is such a physical art that it can happen only when the theatres open. Everyone is now screening old plays.
Do you also think this is an opportunity to reimagine theatre in ways that one never imagined before? I have been listening to Maya Krishna Rao’s “audio theatre” if one may call it so, and have wondered if it is an emerging form? Like the good old days of sound track.
All forms reach a level of fatigue. The biggest toll for theatre is suspension of disbelief. Corona has accelerated and exposed this. Something new will be born. I hope a new aesthetic adds on to our vocabulary. I recall Abhishek Majumdar’s short story, Salt. It is performed in Belgian by three actors. The imagery is so different, so is the narrative. Definitely there will be a churning.
What I am really worried about is the dignity of artistes. In a world where there is no money, dignity is the only thing that they have. To protect dignity, one becomes arrogant. We, the theatre community, were not in intimate relationships, but the performance space bound us all. There are no profit and loss accounts between us. We just know the other exists, and that the other exists. There has always been a perceived sense of numbers. But now I am scared by the number of people who need help, how will they survive…? The government of course doesn’t know we exist, we are not on their radar.
Some of us who run theatre spaces, came together as a collective and submitted a letter to the Chief Minister of Karnataka. We want to tell them that we have been closed for several months and are not generating revenue. To slap fixed electricity and water charges on us in unfair. I just learnt that our case has been passed on to the Disaster Management department! (laughs).
Are you thinking of reinventing the space? In terms of giving it new dimensions and meanings.
I am sure everyone is thinking of bringing people back when they reopen. The one common concern is how are we going to regain the confidence of people? With social distancing, we will not be able to have a full auditorium of 300 people, but will be restricted to 100. In such a situation, how can we help groups to cover their costs? You stage the play, then stream it and earn the balance money. We will want to get the Bangalore audiences back, but we can use digital space for those outside Bangalore.
But digitizing comes with a whole lot of other issues. The performances have to be monetized, and that involves several copyright issues. Right now we are engaged in testing out the legal template for this. It is going to be a new world and we are getting ready for it. Digital will be the new normal, a great amount of fatigue is going to set in, those magical moments that happen in the shared space of actor and audience will be gone for a while now.
So it has been a period of reflection and dreaming?
We have to repurpose our physical space. In these 15 years, it has been a transactional relationship. You buy your ticket and watch the play. You buy a sabudana vada and sit in the café, you buy a book and hangout in the bookstore. We want to think more than the money that exchanges hands. We want to have poetry workshops, readings, a talented child can come and practice music and more. Typically, it should become home. So, can Rangashankara have that heart, that warmth of a home? Can it heal, can it be comforting?
The biggest fall out of COVID is mental health. Each of us has been affected. Children, adults, domestic violence, child abuse… in fact the fallout is bigger than Corona itself. We want to bring in a counsellor who will cut the fluff, and talk real. That is the kind of repurposing I am dreaming off. Every work-in-progress piece of art should be able to walk into Rangashankara.
I feel life will become easier when you take the focus away from money. If someone had told me this six months ago, I would have said: ‘You must be joking!’ But Corona has been a moment of learning. We are here for something else, certainly not money.
Indeed. That is the essence of theatre. Of all arts.
A group of Corona warriors used our space to pack food and supplies. That was a moment of enlightenment. I realised that our connection with our audiences is so feeble. Will they in a crisis, have the confidence to take shelter in Rangashankara? Can this double as a hospital?
A few days after this, for ten of us, we arranged sign language classes. And my dream is to have someone inside the theatre translating the play in sign language. Why are transgenders seen only at signals and not at the theatre? If we are evolved people practicing the arts, all these issues have to be addressed. I am hoping that when we reopen, we will be more generous.
