Bryan Richard finds a theatre of big questions, small steps and youthful spunk brewing outside the city’s established spaces.
Some words have a lot of work to do. Like ‘jam’. Jazz and blues musicians work it. HD Kumaraswamy causes it. Kids slurp it. And now a few young and restless theatre lovers are trying to make it move and spout lines.
When queried on why her organisation Maraa chose to call their monthly open-house theatre gatherings ‘jams’, Ekta Mittal admitted it was something they’ve questioned as well. “For most people, I guess ‘jam’ triggers some notion of spontaneity and some unrehearsed expression of creativity,” she said. “And while we value that (though we plan a fair bit), I think the sense of the word we were drawn to was its implication of a collaborative and participatory process.”
Maraa is a media collective Mittal co-founded with her friend Ramnath Bhat earlier this year, to explore how media spaces could be meaningfully reclaimed for the benefit of individuals and local communities and how media technologies could empower marginalised voices to represent themselves more adequately in important social discourse.
“We are always trying to ask ourselves what words like ‘development’, ‘education’, ‘community’ and even ‘art’ actually mean,” Mittal said. “That’s really the broad framework within which we came to the idea of the theatre jams.”
One critical happenstance was hearing that Gopal Navale of Guruskool, the man behind the city’s Freedom and Sunday Jams (Time Out Bangalore Aug 8-21), was interested in extending that same space and ethos beyond music to the other arts as well. Navale had been putting together an open forum for young bands at his farmhouse in Nelamangala on the first Sunday of every month for a long time and welcomed Maraa to explore how they could be a part of it.
“I guess the idea of a theatre jam worked itself out of what was already happening with music. We started with theatre because we were closest to it,” explained Mittal who is also a part of Masrah, a city theatre group. “We basically wanted it to be as open and free as possible. The open spaces at the farmhouse offer very interesting performance possibilities that conventional stages simply cannot. Anybody is welcome to explore performances of varying lengths based on self-written texts, rough ideas, well-known pieces, improvisation, anything really. Ideally, we want it to grow into something Maraa doesn’t own.”
The opening up of the Sunday Jam space dovetailed with some of the questions Mittal and her circle were already asking of Bangalore’s theatre milieu and their place in it. A particular aspect that continues to concern them is the apparent fragmentation in the city’s theatre scene as well as the larger arts scene. “When you go to a play, you often see the same people. There are not that many new faces coming in. Also a lot of the people who might watch a rock concert may never consider going to the play. Similarly a lot of theatre practitioners may never bother to visit a gallery or attend a concert. That’s given us a lot to consider, because we believe so much can be gained if we shared our experiences, stories and art,” she said.
The first theatre jam in October had about 25 people show up and served up five performances. The second in November had a few more people and three performances interspersed by discussions on each piece. Deepak Srinivasan, a biologist who currently works with Maraa, has performed at both. “This is uncharted territory for most of us, so it will take time for people to make themselves vulnerable to the process,” he said. “Established proscenium stages in the city work great for one kind of theatre but they also arguably stifle other sorts of theatre and with it, fledgling performers.” Both Srinivasan and Mittal are keen to point out that the jam is as much about encouraging performance practice as it is about bringing the audiences back into focus. “We are hoping for real conversations to evolve,” Srinivasan said. “Otherwise there are many cool ideas that come up and then die out because nobody was deepening them.”
Drop by with a pen, or a chisel, or a brush, or a didgeridoo. Or even just your opinions and your curiosity. It’s all game, once the jams begin.
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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Some words have a lot of work to do. Like ‘jam’. Jazz and blues musicians work it. HD Kumaraswamy causes it. Kids slurp it. And now a few young and restless theatre lovers are trying to make it move and spout lines.
