Conflicts within herself and in her physical world amalgamate to make S. Thaninleima’s theatre. The turmoil in the head of a rickshaw puller while surviving physical violence as well – blasts, gun shots and the might of the State – is the crux of her Rickshaw and Gun, which the Manipuri director showcased to a full house as part of the National Theatre Festival of Kerala. Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, seasoned theatreperson, couldn’t stop himself from getting on stage and summing up the play in one word – “brilliant.”
Those who stood through the over an-hour-long production were many, though Thaninleima’s text-heavy play spoke a language they didn’t fathom. Her sense of achievement is evident. “Language is not the only tool of communication,” she says, sitting in her hotel room, exhausted after an interactive session. “When an emotion felt by an actor travels to the audience without words then it is a success,” she says.
Her theatre grammar is still a work-in-progress, she says. But 14 years of theatre in Manipur and directing about 25 plays, including one in Malayalam, has meant getting the better of many conflicts. Coming from what Thaninleima calls an “orthodox Hindu family” in Imphal and a society where a woman in theatre got scant respect, sticking on and keeping it going appears a triumph. Theatre has given her personality. “I was this timid girl who always stuck to my mother and never went alone anywhere,” she remembers. It was so until veteran Loitongbam Dorendra came to her neighbourhood to rehearse a play. “They needed a female actor for a small part. They told me that if I did it, I get to go to Allahabad. For a person who has never been outside Manipur, Allahabad was too much to resist. In fact, the first play I saw was the one I acted in,” she says. That role and the trip, taken with her father’s permission, opened her to theatre, but more importantly, exposed her to confident women who spoke passionately about their work.
Theatre was then on her confidence builder. Tuitions were her alibis to slip out for rehearsals with Dorendra’s group for seven years. Thaninleima would later work for a year each with Manipuri masters Heisnam Kanhailal and Ratan Thiyyam and complete her doctorate in contemporary Manipuri theatre with emphasis on the works of Thiyyam. “From these masters, I learnt the philosophy of their theatre.” But she needed to get to the roots, know the basics to build her own grammar. She headed to the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1997 and later to study technology in theatre in South Korea. “When I went to NSD, my mother was told I was going for higher studies. But I could convince my father and he was always a great support.”
Coming from the smallness of Imphal, NSD proved to be a culture shock. But friends reached out and saw her through. The first thing she did after graduation was to get back to Manipur. “I wanted to break the belief that educated girls did not do theatre. We have a theatre tradition that is hundreds of years old, but I was the first woman director from NSD in Manipur,” she says. It was only when she started directing and her pictures appeared in the newspapers that her mother knew and came around to the fact that her daughter was serious about theatre.
Yet when she got back, it was to a changed Imphal. Iron Sharmila had been arrested for taking on an indefinite fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. “When I was growing up, Imphal was relatively quiet. Troubled areas were the villages and we ourselves learnt from it from the newspapers. But by 2001, bombs and gun shots were common even inside the city,” she says.
Sharmila’s struggle became Thaninleima’s play The Final Countdown and increasingly her plays spoke the struggle she saw everyday in Imphal. “I want my theatre to be a voice that speaks for the welfare of the common people. Theatre, to me, should have a firm purpose.” A desire to include everyone in her theatre has taken Thaninleima to the vast tribal population of Manipur. “I have done a play each with the Tangkhul and Marin people. I spend 45 days with them, pick out a story from their lore, create a play where they write the dialogues in their language and I write in mine and we perform. Asang Eina Aton in Tangkhul was performed at the NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav.” In Manipur, her theatre work is rooted at Khenjonglang, a centre for theatre research and production Thaninleima founded in 2004. Twenty seven cast and crew members who work on theatre round the year are part of it. “We create two to three plays every year. We still do not have many professional actors but the scene is changing slowly.”
