What were we waiting for ?

To talk about my perspective on how the theatre world in both India and the US coped with the challenges of 2020 I would have to start with the year before.  Bear with me. It was a fine autumn day in 2019 when I found myself in the NSD (National School of Drama) library. Plays, books, magazines, research journals, works of the renowned personalities of the performing arts world of India. I felt the space was too small and perhaps only a glimpse of what could easily be a building of its own.  At this point  I had already been in New Delhi for a couple months, having relocated from New York at the end of 2018 to research and document for my next play, to learn about the artistic and theatre practices of India, and to live and reconnect with the country of my birth.  

By this time I had created and presented a digital art exhibition based on the research material I had gathered for the play, become part of an acting repertory, and had also performed a play in several cities in India with a separate theatre group based in Mumbai. I was constantly surrounded by performers and artists in Mandi House, the bustling theatre central of New Delhi, and none of my weekends were without attending a live theatre performance somewhere in Delhi. I still felt that I was in search of the theatre of India. The theatre art techniques that were native to India, ones that we could say came from different regions of India. Where were those? I asked around and received no concrete answers. 

Most performers were smitten by methods of Stanislavsky, Stella Adler, Grotowski or with Method acting or Improvisation, or other theatre techniques from the West. If during a workshop I asked a young actor who moved to Delhi from Uttarakhand to tell me about the theatre of his region, I was simply told, that's just folk songs and dances done by villagers far up in the mountains, that is not theatre. I knew then, that is exactly the theatre I wanted to know more about and so many of such kinds of theatre practices from all over the country. I would then ask him how I could learn about it. After being bothered by my pestering he would say,  you will just have to go to the mountains and those villages and find those people. I would ask if there was a way to know of them in Delhi?  In the capital of the country? He would say no, there was no other way but to go find it yourself, "Just go there ok?".  If you want to know, go find them and maybe then you can learn. Then one day as my acquaintances of this theatre world grew, a kind soul made me understand that this is the city, where there is only one place where you get to learn of such practices and that is at NSD (National School of Drama) or the other being Sangeet Naatak Akademi. 

I was thrilled, so one day I strolled right in, not exactly that, well at the gate I had to explain that I was only going to the NSD library ... I suppose it's a school so not just anyone is allowed in.  National School of Drama, a prestigious school of theatre in India accepts 26 students per year from a vast pool of hundreds of thousands of applicants that come from all over India. They conduct written exams and auditions and pick a lucky and stellar group of young people who are full of dreams of becoming actors, directors, and designers. NSD's productions are the finest theatre one can watch. The substantial government funding shows in their well-constructed sets and immaculate lights, costumes, and scenery. Not to mention the brightest minds and souls that can make any world come alive on stage.  I asked a young admin at the library if at all I could get to see a class at NSD, just one class, maybe just a workshop, only to see,  watch, observe, maybe just one hour.  I explained to him that I was a theatre artist who had lived and worked in the theatre in New York for the past six years and I  was also working on writing my next play.  More importantly, earlier in the year I had performed on the NSD stage in their annual festival, with a troupe whose director had directed me in a play, back in the US. The young man asked me to go to the main office and speak to the director and maybe he would allow me. 

Excited, I head towards the office, not looking back to see if those at the gate who had interrogated me earlier would try to stop me. The young man had told me the director would have assistants, I couldn't simply walk in, naturally, I would need to talk to the assistants.  I was first questioned why I want to meet the director and then I was told he can't meet me unless I fill a form. I filled out a paper with my credentials, theatre experience, and the reason for my visit.  After filling all this, I got a response to wait and would be informed if the director would see me. During this wait time, I took in all the photos and memorabilia covering the hall. Photos of recognizable faces of now-famous performers of Indian cinema and TV shows. Here they were, in their younger years as NSD students. It was as though I was flipping through the family album of noted actors and catching their past full of ambition.  

Soon I was asked to enter the office. The man sitting at the desk never makes eye contact. The director, looked down and simply continued to smoke his cigarette at his desk. He motioned for me to sit down. As I took my seat he stared at my form and asked me what I wanted. I requested if it was at all possible that I could sit in a rehearsal, workshop, or class and just observe for a day or even an hour, I am very curious about the techniques taught here in India.  The answer was a no, a simple flat no. It came rather quickly.  No eye contact at any time and I don't remember if I just laughed as if I had known that would be the answer. I didn't try to explain that I would not take any notes, I would not record, I just wanted to see how theatre in India is made, I didn't justify being a theatre artist myself or ask why it was a flat no, or that I had just worked in a Ramleela trying to understand if that could teach me something about the traditional theatre of India, I didn't talk about any of these things, I just said thank you so much for your valuable time and walked out.  

Later, on my way home on the Metro after a day of rehearsal with the repertory, I thought about what it means for an art institution, a national art institution to not be accessible to other artists? I vacillated between this thought and why I would even think that I should be given such a chance?  But then, where would I go next to learn about how the real theatre in India is made or exists? Is it entirely futile to even ask this question?  It was later that I found out that the said NSD director, runs his own school in the mountains, a theatre training camp that he charges heavy fees for, and drives a lot of the traffic of students who don't get selected in NSD to his own school. Remember, NSD is government-funded and so is a scholarship based for all entrants.  The private school run by this director and some of his fellow colleagues in the mountains is 75K  INR or so is what I have heard.  A decent amount of money.  

It had only been a few months after being told "no", that the acting repertory I was part of was going to be led by a teacher who used to teach at NSD.  Professor K.S Rajendran is a man now in his 70s who was from a small town in the Southern state of Chennai.  He arrived at NSD in the 70s with very little money and no warm clothes.  He had never experienced winter back home. He later disclosed that they didn't even wear slippers in his village, he was used to walking barefoot. He found himself in Delhi, at NSD as a young man hungry for the theatre, one of his teachers lent him her sweater for the winter because Delhi winters are biting cold and he had little money and no sweater. He survived, went on to direct many Sanskrit dramas as well as Shakespeare and various western works at NSD and other theatres around the country.  He came as a blessing for me. 

He would repeat again and again that he would not survive without his actors, that his life is nothing without theatre.  He sneaked me into his lectures at institutions he would hold workshops. He was invited to speak about Sanskrit Drama. He spoke to me at length about various theater practices of India including how Natyashastra, the art scriptures of India finds their way into everything from music, dance, and theatre unknowingly because all Indian arts are connected.  He directed me in a show where I played Father Manders in Ibsen's Ghosts I learned specific details on how expressions of a man and woman differ. I have played male characters on stage many many times, but his direction opened many doors in my mind about what it means to play the opposite gender. This was Feb 2020, Covid-19 hit the following month. Repertory stopped and so did all theatre activities in New Delhi, in India, and in the world. They stopped back in New York too. 

It was not until a few weeks that I saw an ad for a play being put up by the prestigious The Public Theater of NYC, a virtual play on Zoom. 

What Do We Need to Talk About? by Richard Nelson was not only a Public production but also available for you to watch for FREE online. I was thrilled! I barely ever got to see Public shows with the crazy schedule I had in NYC.  I couldn't believe it! Now all the way in New Delhi, I would get to see a play by the Public. This play was a dose of calm for me that I sincerely need at the start of the pandemic. 

Within one day there were around 31K views on a play I caught on YouTube by a renowned theatre company... available for free for a limited time. Did that just happen? Would 31K people ever watch a play in a physical stage is what I wondered? No, that would never ever be logistically possible. And NO, I am not talking about doing away with the live theatre experience. BUT what if, what if this was offered during a normal year? And then I thought some more, what had taken them so long to do this? We have had the internet for two or so decades already? Mobile phones for about fifteen years or so? YouTube for a good part of the decade?  So why did it take a pandemic for an entire industry to see that there is a need for their content online? What were you waiting for? I may come across as insensitive but if we understood anything from this difficult time it was that people are HUNGRY for art, they NEED it to survive, and guess what? They will Pay for it if we are prepared to offer it with reasonable quality. We should have arrived here sooner.   Even so, it is time to have these conversations, what will be the economics of such a setup? How will creative teams adapt to this change? Why? Because there is a clear demand.  Not all content on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, HotStar, et al is great but it is consumed. We in the theatre are selling ourselves short if we are not catering to this audience base that prefers laptop viewing, these are people who are anyway not showing up for the live performances, they just might if we offer a unique virtual experience.  

Within a month I found myself submerged in virtual content from both the west and the east. Puppet zoom theatre, dance performances, music programs filled up my calendar. I wondered about the access that was denied to me earlier at NSD when I saw many virtual workshops and hour long talk backs by current and previous faculty of the school. There is a theatre artist from Arunachal Pradesh who shares the struggles of his theatre community in great detail, he speaks of his growth as an artist coming from a state that only makes it in mainstream news for violence. He shed light upon racism he faced when he stepped out to the capital, but he holds his time at NSD in very high regard. He discusses life after graduating from NSD, and his ongoing pursuit in the creative field that has taken him all over the world and now back to his hometown where he wishes to cultivate more of the native forms of theater.  Sangeet Natak Akademi another such place of high regard and stature and also not somewhere you can just walk in, holds archives of many valuable performances, lectures, and workshops of Indian arts has now been sharing all of these treasures and allowing for many workshops and lectures, 11am - 5pm every day. I've watched musicals from Manipur, plays from Kerala, artists sharing their movement practices step by step in great detail over a course of a week, or a month.  This is all through Sangeet Natak Akademi's social media channels.  One wonders what anyone was planning to do with those archives anyway? Perhaps it is a strange question to ask but I really truly wonder about that. Even now when all this information is being shared one feels overwhelmed and cannot possibly consume it every single day BUT we can agree that it is a lot better if shared rather than sit somewhere completely inaccessible.  

Besides the world of theater, there are lectures from several disciplines, the kinds I would never know of or have access to. In one a professor debates that songs in Hindi Cinema have enough eloquent poetry in them that they need to be studied thoroughly and should be part of the curriculum for a degree in both the Hindi and Urdu language. He cities songs I have grown up listening to but never known of the significant references hidden in them, or who the original writers were or how the song may have traveled from a freedom fighter's pen to be graced by playback singers of high caliber but changed into a romantic one. Then the Indian Institute of Advanced Study has an open forum discussion in the late afternoons when literary scholars from all over India are invited to speak on topics such as Rivers of India. The discourse is colored with stories, songs, poetry in many languages.  Indic Academy holds lectures on Archaeology, Mythology, and lets us ask questions directly to scholars. There's even an event where Ruskin Bond reads his poems.  A renowned folk singer of Kajri confesses during her FB and Instagram Live event that she loves this mode of performing and communicating because of the rapport she and her audience have started to build. She is motivated by comments full of praise for her singing and feels connected to the audience when she delves into the intricacies of each Kajri couplet revealing their deep connections with everyday life, culture, and traditions of Northern India, particularly UP, Jharkhand and MP.  

There is a  lecture by a Sanskrit teacher, also an astrologer, based out of Jaipur who takes the example of Mel Gibson's Apocalipto to show how astrology, storytelling, Natyashastra are linked, "the sun eclipses when they try to execute the protagonist, it is an omen, execution cannot be carried. The sun is a symbol of hero's energy". He speaks about other ways nature responds to the narrative, which he claims can be traced back to parts of Natyashastra. He proceeds to compare Julius Caeser with Ramayana with parallels between Calapunia and Madodri.  

It is doubly amusing to watch these not so technologically savvy but very learned individuals get upset and mad at the technology "I AM NOT MUTE!" or how they choose to take a random phone call during a live session and whisper into the phone "No, not now ... right now I'm on live... I'll call you later, yes... no please I'm live. YES I HAVE PRESSED THE UNMUTE!"  I watched an entire production of Ramleela that was a tapestry of a live theater performance tied with a lecture on iconography, aesthetics, classical music, and dance, all of these forms created a unique virtual experience.   

Then there were events that you knew would not exist if not for this format. When else was I going to see Simon McBurney, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, AND Nikhil Sawhney each talk about their relationship with sound ??? FOR AN HOUR? Ways of Listening by Complicite. And to be able to comment on the livestream. Even possibility for them to answer your question? I was thrilled.  

At this point EVERYONE is sharing their art, theatre companies big and small, dance theatres, institutions are opening up their archival content, museums, everyone wants their content presented, their work shown, makes me wonder the reason why we make any art at all? Clearly, we do it because we want it to be received, shared, learned from, else we feel incomplete. A performance/work of art comes full circle when it is received by the audience. 

Prestigious film festivals, the big names have now opened up their courses, Sundance offers labs and classes, Cannes offers workshops. I got to participate in Cannes XR workshop. I ended up writing a comic book and worked with a team of individuals from New York and Mumbai,.  An entire comic book was written, drawn, and animated through remote collaboration.

Before I knew it, by mid-year I had stage-managed a performance half a world away with performers from the US, UK, and India. Later the same company based in the SF Bay Area organized an all zoom theatre festival, I produced the India part of the festival.  

with the company of The Emeryville Horror: A Tale of Environmental Vengeance, a virtual play. Performers from the US, UK, and India. 

Technically run with a crew from the West Coast of the US and New Delhi, India. 

More info here > https://www.sameboattheater.org/projects.html

After the horror play, we started working on an international zoom fest of original works with a focus on the environment and social justice.

as the producer of the Indian leg of the festival, I put out a call for submissions in Hindi along with English. 

I live translated two performances on zoom during the festival from Hindi to English. 

I am a plant. a play adapted for the zoom platform by Varun Narian, featuring Saad Qureshi and Dr. Hara the puppet. A conversation between a poet and a botanist both trying to find meaning in their existence. Performing from Mumbai, India for California based Same Boat Theater Collective's International zoom festival "Earthquake: Moving the Earth with our Voices" Oct 25 2020 7PM SF, London and New Delhi.

Though I was really enjoying being part of something that was bringing artists from several parts of the world together, I was also ignoring how exhausted I would get. Co-ordinating between time zones was not easy, I found myself staying up several hours during the night to run the UK part of the show. Though I did almost oversleep that happened after spending the day conducting India shows. Finally, I caught up on sleep and ran the shows from the west coast the next morning. So yes, there were days I just wish I didn't have to look at another screen.  As a result of this festival, we ended up being invited by another theatre festival based in the Philippines, that had turned into an online event this year. It's true, this kind of connection would not have been possible in a non-virtual world, and that too this quickly. We did dream together of one day meeting each other in person and work on a physical plane.  

There were other realizations while working with artists from various parts of the world. Camera resolution, weak connection, shed light on the lack of resources. We learned much more starkly about the lives of artists like us on the other side of the world. We held our breath hoping everyone's connection would work and that there would be no hick-ups during performances. If there were any such cases, we felt a little tinge of live theatre happening and that made us miss the stage even more. Our festival was put out at the same time when American theater was essentially imploding, as dialogue on racism within the system came to the forefront.  The artists were tired of being ignored because they didn't represent the "mainstream". They had started to oust companies that discriminated against BIPOCs and refused to stage their stories. There were webpages with documentation put out by artists all over the US, disclosing practices of racism and white supremacy by known theaters. Several big names were publicly called out for their racist behaviors. It was a time of reckoning.  The BIPOCs started raising their voices and big theatre started to take notice by ... by ... putting out notices on their fb and insta profiles... that ... that ...that .... well ..they were taking notice... and were committed to changing practices. "We see you" was the tone in return from the artists, meaning we see you, all of you who promise and we will be watching if you put in the work. I felt proud that I was part of a diverse, inclusive festival at this time. However, now at the end of the year when I see the news outlets report the various virtual performances that "stood out" in 2020, it is lost on me that they had no clue about our festival that was conducted all on zoom, across three continents with the majority of BIPOC talent. What should we have done to get recognized? I have no idea.  

Suddenly, there was a need to disconnect to not attend yet another zoom event, there were so many instances of missing the stage but then I started to think of those who could not have these opportunities, who were limited in resources, no devices, no data pack, no connection. When I thought of them I understood the privilege I had and decided to say yes to the opportunities that came my way.  

All this does not come with its own bag of questions, how to pay artists? Who owns the content? How to regulate the sharing of the original material? Should virtual platform techs get creative credits? These questions are not going away, because online content is not going away. Instead of running away from these difficult questions, it is time to get creative in this aspect as well.  We need to work together.  

When I look back at what 2020 opened up for someone like me, someone who is hungry to learn and receive as much art as I can, I don't feel so bad about that autumn day in 2019, walking out of the director's office.  I do think that institutions need to take note, they need to welcome people. We are afraid of what we don't know but we have known this world of tech. Technology will never replace what you do as an artist. Work with people who make technology work for you. It is possible. Open your doors, don't wait for a pandemic.

Further interesting articles : 

1. Broadway Can Learn from South Korea’s Theatre Market During COVID-19

https://www.onstageblog.com/editorials/2020/4/29/broadway-can-learn-from-south-koreas

2. Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?
https://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical/2020/04/arts-rebuild-what-and-why.html

I can provide links to all the events I have discussed here (if they are still up) upon request. Feel free to drop a comment.  

This post is in line with my attempt to work towards  "a decade of documentation" 2020 - 2030