Theatre is an excellent medium for entertainment and social messaging: NSD Director

How does Bharat Rang Mahotsav remain relevant even after 22 years of its existence?

The purpose of Bharat Rang Mahotsav (BRM) is to promote theatre in India. It remains a reality that theatre is still not the kind of profession wherein artists can earn their livelihood by just doing theatre. This is because we, the audience, are key in theatre and unfortunately our country still doesn’t have a committed audience for theatre.

I believe although theatre is very much being done in some pockets, for example in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Guwahati, or in some parts of Northeast and Andhra Pradesh, but in the rest of India, it is not so popular. Here, BRM becomes very important as it is one way to promote theatre all over India and to create interest among the young people by telling them that theatre is an excellent medium for entertainment as well as for social messaging.

Secondly, BRM is necessary as it also provides a kind of financial support to the theatre community. We not just provide them the opportunity to showcase their talent but also pay some performance fee or honorarium.

Additionally, BRM gives an opportunity to theatre artists to perform in different locations all over the country.

NSD is the premier institution for theatre and acting, people know about it and because of this brand name people come and watch plays. This, in turn, helps in promoting the larger cause of spreading theatre culture all over the country.

Do you think there are any areas of improvement in the way BRM is conducted by the NSD?

If you see, some of our rural areas have a very rich theatre tradition such as swang, nautanki, etc. But sadly, NSD could never connect to these rural masses. Gradually, what happened in the last 50-60 years, these traditions have been losing their charm among the rural people as nobody has made efforts to connect to these masses. I think we are lacking a national policy, neither NSD is doing anything on that nor any other institution. Currently, the focus is on theatre in the metro cities but actually theatre belongs to rural areas, we are not reaching out to the people there. We should reconnect to our folk traditions and go back to the rural masses. I come from a very small place in UP where I used to take part in folk theatre. But now if I go back to my place, I don’t see any bacho ki natak mandli. It has gone away. I think somewhere we have not done enough to keep them alive.

The need of the hour is also to develop a culture of buying tickets for plays. It is impossible to sustain theatre for long if this culture is not developed. Theatre just can’t survive on grants. If you keep theatre groups just on grant for a long time, they would not want to grow. So a lot of introspection is required and unfortunately NSD has become a very closed circuit, controlled by the alumni. I have seen in the last 10 months that a lot of closed minds need to be opened up and they need to be given the message that NSD is a government institution, which belongs to the entire theatre community. Everybody should play a role in promoting theatre as it belongs to everyone.

What should we look forward to in this year’s BRM?

We have 10 folk plays in our schedule, six are part of open theatre, four in auditoriums. We are also inviting theatre and cinema artists for interaction and discussion on new avenues of acting and drama. Adil Hussain will be interacting with the audience on February 18, and Panjak Tripathi on February 21.

There are director meet-ups as well; everyday we will have director interactions on the next day of the play. The closing ceremony of the event is being organised at Kevadiya.

We have also invited theatre connoisseurs like Himani Shivpuri, Chittaranjan Tripathy, and Teekam Joshi. Not just in Delhi, we are inviting eminent theatre artists at every location for the opening and closing ceremonies. For example, in Bhopal we have invited Rajeev Verma, and in Jammu, we are inviting Balwant Gargi and Agnishekhar. We are putting special focus on inviting local theatre artists in their respective states.

Any important seminar that we should be looking forward to?

Because of time constraints, we have not been able to schedule any seminars this year, but we have four book discussions. There is a book discussion on Jaishankar Prasad (Book name and author- Avsad Ka Anand by Satyadev Tripathi). Similarly we are planning a book discussion on Irrfan Khan, for that we have requested his wife to be present as one of the speakers. ( Book name and author – Irfan … Aur Kuchh Panne Kore Rah Gaye by Ajay Brahmatmaj).