It’s a directorial debut industry insiders have been waiting for. Known as a light designer, but decidedly multi-faceted, Asmit Pathare finally gets his show on the road this week. Premiering this evening, is Us & Them , a play with swirling political undercurrents that Pathare has both written and directed. It is inspired by a lecture delivered at the Jawaharlal Nehru University by feminist scholar Nivedita Menon, transposing the weight of its ideas to an imagined world of smoke and mirrors where a conjuror (Kalyan Choudhury), with artful sleight of hand, puts under a suggestible clientele, as they fall in line with clearly defined ways of thinking. A telling phrase from the blurb describes the milieu as a ‘binary’ world, “where the possibility of a third [perspective] is a crime.” This undoubtedly resonates with the current climate of extreme polarisation and intolerance (a word so battered and beaten, it has lost its bite) in the country. “I’ve been interested in these debates ever since the notion of ‘anti-nationalism’ gained currency. What also struck me was how British sedition laws continued to persist and to be used in insidious ways,” explains the director, of the play’s raison d’être.
Debating nationalism
What can be described as a coup for producers Aarambh Mumbai, is that the opening run ties in with a talk on ‘Nationalism and Patriotism’ featuring Menon in conversation with author Jerry Pinto at The Harkat Studios tomorrow. Menon’s persuasive speech at the JNU’s Alternative Classroom in 2016 was titled, ‘Nation, a Daily Plebiscite’, which conscientiously and cogently dismantled the idea of a nation-state that tramples upon the aspirations and rights of its people, a populace that has never been monolithic. She spoke on Kashmir’s contentious accession to the Indian Union, the attempts to impose Hindi as a national language, or the egregious use of Section 124A to curb free speech (under which Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid were arrested weeks earlier, prompting the widespread protests Menon was part of), the dubbing of dissent as treason in no uncertain terms.
Perhaps in spirit more than word, Us & Them , draws on these ideas to build a new parable. “I wasn’t too politically aware around the time of the crackdown on the Kabir Kala Manch. Post the JNU protests, when translating a Ground Zero report from Marathi into English, I acquired a deeper understanding about the underlying issues,” says Pathare.
Social conscience
Prior to this outing, the writer-director had commenced work last year on a play devised from a poem by Sanjeev Khandekar, titled All That I Wanna Do , a ‘ deerghakaavya ’ that ran into 35 pages and shares its name with a 2005 art installation by Khandekar featuring human organs ‘strung out like lamps’. Pathare had directed a rehearsed reading of the poem at the NCPA’s Tata Theatre Foyer in 2010, reading alongside Geetanjali Kulkarni, Tejas Ranade and Mandar Gokhale. “That was a larger comment on capitalism and consumerism, and religion as we know it, and its protagonist was deeply entrenched in caste,” he says. While the project didn’t take off (but might still be revived), it shares the social consciousness exhibited by Us & Them , which is incidentally Pathare’s first script for the stage.
Destroying illusions
Elaborating on the use of magic and make-believe in his new play, Pathare says, “I have been interested in the word ‘binary’ both from a social and mathematical standpoint, and how it might be used to change our perception and interpretation of things.” The manner in which magicians use ‘binary’ attention spans to misdirect an audience in order to make magic happen is how Pathare hopes to create his own museum of metaphors. Us and Them uses common party tricks as well as the rudiments of mentalism, to talk about how latter-day illusionists (read, politicians), who abound in the world we live in, have managed to pull the wool over our collective eyes.
Us & Them will be staged at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu today and tomorrow; more details on bookmyshow.com. Us & Them: a discussion between Nivedita Menon and Jerry Pinto will be on September 25 at Harkat Studios at 12 p.m.
