Knowing yourself

Look within and you will find yourself – this is the core of the work that Subhendu Bhandari has done so far. The theatre artist, who is engaging with villagers of

Ramchandrapur, in Howrah district, makes use of psychological analysis while teaching them to get into the characters. He has brought the same skill-set and analysis to share in the workshop on 'Psychological Acting and Psychological Gesture' during the third edition of IAPAR Festival.

Talking about the psychological aspect, Bhandari says, “Our theatre group, Amta Parichay works with both kids and adults in rural areas. What we have realised is that the children are expressive and emotionally rich. We train them in physical theatre aspect so that they might take up theatre, become artists, in the future. We take pains to ensure that our interactions don't seem like they are attending school.”

Bhandari and his team rely on oral tradition, telling stories from Ram Jatra, Krishna Jatra, peppering their tales with twists and character traits. “Suppose I tell them to act like a Raja or a King, but most of them haven't seen a king before, so how they will enact him? We tell them, 'A king is very proud. He doesn't pay attention to others. This is seen in his walk'. They get it instantly and enact it. Sometimes we tell them to observe Punjabis for their demeanour and gait,” explains Bhandari.

The artist, who has studied drama from Rabindra Bharati University, says that the rural people also improvise when it comes to staging plays. If someone is playing the character of Hanuman, he takes it upon himself to work on his costume, using jute fabric for the tail and tucks it in a sari, which he has folded and made short.

Bhandari reiterates that we have a rich oral tradition of telling stories, of getting into the skin of characters but since we haven't documented it, we have to depend on Western writers and artists. “We have Ram Leela tradition, which is at least 5,000 years old. The artists throw themselves into the characters they are playing and then throw themselves out when they are done. That's the physical and psychological theory of acting. There is no documentation of this and hence we look up to the works done by Western artists,” he adds.

In his workshop, the artist will rely on tales and stories in our lores, legends and shared real life experiences. “How does your body respond when you are ill? How it responds when you are happy? We want actors to get involved and engaged with what they are feeling and then expressing it. It's all shared life experiences that we dig into and make use of in our exercise,” points out Bhandari.

Bhandari's play Ela Didi was also staged in the city as a part of the IAPAR festival. The Bangla play, which has Rituparna Biswas as protagonist Mukti, focusses on the 'you'

buried under societal expectations, prejudices and stereotypes. Often we are unaware of what we can do, what our strengths are. The keyline is to find out ourselves.

“Ela didi is one accomplished youngster, living in a village. She excels at studies, arts, music, you name it. She is often held as an example before other girls. Mukti is one such girl, whose parents want her to be like Ela Didi. But Ela Didi elopes and gets married. Her marital life turns out to be sour and she commits suicide. Then, Mukti and others wonder what are they supposed to do? Does Mukti also need to die? At this juncture, she remembers her elder brother's words, who keeps telling her to 'be herself'. Mukti decides to write her story and go from village to village telling it to everyone,” narrates Bhandari.

This play, which has been staged 282 times so far, is a tool to make the youngsters speak, to offer them hope. “We use Ela Didi as a tool for theatre therapy. We stage this play for adolescents who often battle identity crisis. We performed once in Tripura, and one student who had attempted suicide earlier, came and told Rituparna Biswas, 'I will not take my life now. Instead I will try to stand on my feet'. The student formed an NGO and now works for the cause of girl child. One student talked about how she was abused by her neighbour. Another child opened up that she was raped by her father repeatedly. She told Rituparna, 'I told my mother about this. But she is not believing me. What should I do?' We want such kids to find themselves through theatre. We want them to offer hope,” he says. Truly, arts can help you connect with yourself.