Three weeks on, Bharat Rang Mahotsav (known by its colloquial moniker Bharangam), the annual theatre festival of the National School of Drama (NSD) will ramble to a close on Thursday evening. The closing ceremony will be preceded by a performance in Sanskrit of a classical text attributed to Kapilendra Deva, the 15th-century founder of Odisha’s Gajapati dynasty. The play, Parashuram Vijaya , is directed by Ajit Narayan Das, an NSD alumni who is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a member of the BJP. In it, militant Brahmin Parashurama vows to rid the world of Kshatriyas, particularly the evil king who killed his father for the ownership of the bovine goddess Sabala — the divine mother of all cows. While the piece’s pre-eminence in Odia literature is undisputed, the period drama is a telling finale to what is the Bharangam’s twentieth edition, from the view of the NSD’s almost perennially politically-tinged institutional wrangles.
Standard issue
The first edition of the festival took place in 1999, when Ram Gopal Bajaj was the NSD director. Last year, in its stead, the grandiose Theatre Olympics was foisted upon the unsuspecting public in 17 Indian cities. It was the Indian iteration of an international event that is not usually marked by the excesses and wastefulness lavished upon this edition by the government. Self-styled as “the greatest carnival of thespianism” (sic), it was an ill-organised show of strength whose very raison d'être was questioned by theatre practitioners like Sunil Shanbag and Sudhanva Deshpande, on whom the irony of such extravagance in an otherwise cash-strapped arts environment was not lost. The NSD seems to have recovered from the fracas, somewhat expediently, and this year’s Bharangam is certainly another fairly ‘standard issue’ edition of the festival, that has always been more a melange of cultural displays than a rigorously curated theatre showcase.
A viral video that has recently been doing the rounds features Naseeruddin Shah being interviewed by the incisive Irfan, the host of the Rajya Sabha TV’s chat show – Guftagoo. Shah, of whom it can be said that candour is his creed, was critical of the NSD’s western-influenced pedagogical model, and the fact that a pan-national institution irrevocably dilutes the regional roots of students plucked from all corners of India. The Bharangam itinerary arguably confirms this. It’s a line-up peppered with NSD alumni, and their productions, albeit in myriad languages, often display an aesthetic sameness that is now almost dated — the NSD-influenced play is so easily recognisable that it is a cliché unto itself.
Need to introspect
However, the regional theatre ethos, in any state, can also be self-limiting and caught up in its own hegemonies and fissures. Perhaps, the NSD’s potential as a space for cultural cross-pollination rather than ill-advised assimilation could be explored further. There have certainly been large institutional changes since its inception in 1959 (expect a 60th anniversary celebration with much fanfare soon), but perhaps not in the accelerated fashion that might be mandated by the constantly moulting theatre ecosystem outside its walls.
Of course, many of the works exhibited at Bharangam this year; reflect the rigour and substance that might lead one to believe that the proverbial cup is half full. A random selection of gems might include such diverse ventures as Joy Maisnam’s zestful Andha Yug , a corporeally delineated version of the classic text, or Sankar Venkateswaran’s compelling non-verbal adaptation of Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken, or Koumarane Valavane’s evocative Karuppu , which is based on otherwise invisibilised ancient Dravidian rituals. There are also umpteen middling efforts, too many to be named, that simply make up the numbers and perhaps point to a morass rather than a pathway to the future.
It is significant that discourse and introspection is built into Bharangam’s framework. The World Theatre Forum, hosted at the festival, featured prime movers from both Indian and international theatre engaged in a host of intense exchanges, both philosophical and pragmatic, about the essence of theatre itself, and the politics to which it must necessarily subscribe. Despite its maudlin pace and pseudo-seriousness, each session, telecast live and archived on social media, is well worth a watch.
