What does punishment intend to do, asked the 15th century scholar, Cesare Beccaria, in his An Essay on Crimes and Punishments published in 1754. Punishment, even the harshest kind, cannot undo the crime surely. Is the sole purpose then to torment the criminal? Beccaria did not think so. He believed in justice that was on the lines of reformation rather than retribution. Beccaria also argued that instead of shunning those charged with a crime, the idea is to make them a part of the mainstream and bring about a transformation. Now, is there a way to implement this concept?
Incidentally, Sankalpa, Mysuru seems to know a way. Since 1997, the group has been training jail inmates, be it convicts or under trials, across prisons in Karnataka in theatre and more importantly, securing them an opportunity to perform before an audience like any regular troupe. Through the means of theatre, these prison residents are given a chance to introspect, externalise an internal turmoil and perhaps, even achieve change by living in the skin of the characters they play. In the words of Hulugappa Kattimani, the co-founder of Sankalpa, “These inmates do not want to be actors but want to learn more about life itself. There can be no better means than theatre to teach that.”
Over the next two days, Sankalpa Mysuru will present around 30 inmates from the prisons in Mysuru and Bengaluru in a theatre festival at Rangashankara.
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For Kattimani, who is a Rangayana artist, Sankalpa began as an experiment. “When I was training under B.V. Karanth, he would ask us to spend days loitering in a market or a railway station. He would say that a play is always born in the midst of people. We even visited jails as a part of this. It was then that I realized how different a jail is from the construction of it in popular media. The idea for Sankalpa came from Karanth’s own plan to teach theatre to the inmates of a jail in Bhopal. Inspired by this, at first, I was not sure how the jail authorities and the police establishment in Karnataka would respond. But, thanks to their support, we have been successfully reading and staging interesting texts sitting in the environs of the jail,” he explains.
Kattimani, along with his wife Pramila, have been incessantly working with inmates and have garnered a wealth of experience thanks to Sankalpa. He likens the inmates to nursery children. “It takes a while to gain their trust. When I began, it took a week for me to convince them to believe in me and in my project. I began with teaching them yoga which we then performed to music composed by Pandit Jasraj and Bhimsen Joshi. Then, I organized them in pairs and asked them to get to know each other- a crucial exercise for any troupe,” he says. The power of theatre to bring about a change became evident in the manner in which some inmates reacted to the roles they were given. “I picked one of them to play Gandhi for a play. He was quite ruthless and playful otherwise. He did not take it seriously. Gradually, when I gave him some books to read, I noticed a change. He took an active interest in Basavanna’s vachanas. Then he read Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth . He gave up meat and even began walking bare feet. It was a complete role reversal.”
Having performed in districts across Karnataka, he recalls that a particularly crushing juncture at each production is when the inmates-cum-actors enter the police van after the performance is over. “I have noticed that it is painful for the inmates who have just gotten a taste of freedom on the stage and so much love from the audience. The audience too becomes aware of the reality that these inmates have to live with.”
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They will present on stage Jayant Kaikini’s Jothegiruvavanu Chandira , H.S.Shivaprakash’s Maaranayaka , Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambar’s Huliya Neralu and K.V.Subbanna’s Soole Sanyasi on April 29 and 30.