The last of the coveted Studio Tamaasha residencies went to researcher and theatre practitioner Sharmistha Saha. Over more than a week in February, Saha chipped away at her work-in-progress performance piece on everyday casteism, and now the play is finally ready to be exhibited in its first public run at suburban fringe venues. Qissa Kothi’s Romeo Ravidasand Juliet Devi , which is a two-hander featuring Dilip Pandey and Priyanka Charan in the eponymous parts, is Saha’s third venture after the Tagore piece Her Letters , and Bundelkhand Ki Virgin Machhliyan , which was based on the novel, The Virgin Fish of Babughat by Lokenath Bhattacharya. Her new work, whose working title was Chamdi , has been co-written by her and IIT student Shubham Sumit, and has documentary rather than literary antecedents. Contrary to what one might make of its title, it isn’t a star-crossed or caste-crossed romance.
Work-in-progress
Instead tales of oppression drawn from news accounts — so incredulous as to seem fanciful — have inspired Saha to stage a fictional intersection between the ‘others’ who populate the Indian hinterland. Pandey’s character, for instance, is based on Pradip Kalubhai Rathod, a young Dalit boy who was killed for owning and riding a horse in his village. Similarly, Charan plays a social justice warrior modelled on Kausalya Shankar, the feminist crusader from Tamil Nadu who had once survived an attempt at an honour killing. This unlikely Romeo and Juliet pair are kindred spirits who attempt to excavate the country’s heart of darkness.
As part of a work-in-progress sharing, Saha assembled an interesting set of artists and thinkers, all of whom have explored questions around caste discrimination. While Saha’s gaze is that of the non-Dalit, which is always considered a contentious lens however informed and compassionate, some of those who she engaged with at the event included the Bahujan director Jyoti Nisha, whose film B R Ambedkar Now and Then is awaiting release. The insider perspective possesses an immediate gravitas and authentic angst, as demonstrated by scholar Kiran Pawar, who performed radical poet Namdeo Dhasal’s seminal invective ‘Man, You Should Explode’, which was published in the anthology Golpitha in 1972. This poem has slipped into the theatre mainstream of late, in works such as Sunil Shanbag’s Blank Page and Rajat Kapoor’s What is Done is Done .
Subaltern voices
Also familiar was yet another dramatic rendering of Rohith Vemula’s last letter — this time in Hindi by the young actor Priypal Dashantee, who is a member of Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, an intrepid anti-caste theatre troupe who style themselves as lok-shahirs for the digital age. Vemula’s letter, powerful and stirring in every reading, has provided fodder to theatre works across the country – from the radical street theatre of Kerala’s Ramachandran Mokeri to a protest piece by the Delhi-based Jana Natya Manch. Saha’s sharing at Studio Tamaasha places her piece in the context of a burgeoning movement. Dalit art still occupies the margins, but many more ‘fringes’ have now been commandeered and transformed.
Another important subaltern voice that will be amplified this weekend is that of Dakxin Chhara, at this Saturday’s Mumbai Local initiative by Junoon. Chhara is a ghumantoo natakbaaj and filmmaker who hails from a denotified tribe, the Chharas of Ahmedabad. It was a tribe that once came under the dreaded ambit of the draconian Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Even after being ‘denotified’ in 1952, they were still stigmatised and ostracised.
Chhara and several members of his tribe have long been involved with the Budhan Theatre, which was founded by Ganesh Devy in 1998, and named for Budhan Sabar, a tribal man whose controversial custodial death in West Bengal’s Purulia inspired their play, Budhan . Chhara will talk of how theatre has proved to be liberating for the troupe. “Theatre is our catharsis, our dialogue with society and the system,” he says.
Romeo Ravidas and Juliet Devi will stage on March 2 and 3 at Castiko Space, Versova (pay as you like); on March 7, 8 and 9 at Cuckoo Club, Bandra (see bookmyshow.com); on March 10 at Harkat Studios, Versova (see insider.com)
Dakxin Chhara will speak at the MCubed Library, Bandra on March 2 at 11 a.m.
