An interview with Parnab Mukherjee from ‘Best of Calcutta Campus’ theatre group, who presented an experimental theatre- video titled ‘Nirupama Dutt main bahut udas hoon’ on the inaugural day of 1st day of Gorakhpur film festival.
Question- Parnab, it was a scintillating performance where two of you used video footages such as those showing manipur women’s naked demo protesting Thangalam Manorama’s rape and murder by the armed forces, both of you moved at different corners of the theatre, simultaneously delivering different dialogues including some beautiful tracts of Poetry from Muktibodh, kumar Vikal, Tagore, Paash and Gorakh Pandey? Tell us more about your craft?
Answer- Traditional theatre is dependent on western notion of prosenium. Our endeavour which is based on a further liberated form called third theatre explores the spaces to a greater detail. To us ‘space’ is very important in theatre. The history of the space, the nature of the space, the acoustics of the space, all this is incorporated in the performance. As a result,’ space’ is no more a raised platform or a chauraha, it is an arena of dialectic and polemics..
Question- How do you link poetry with video in your theatre performance?
Answer- In ‘Meghdut’, Kalidas talks about a cloud that floats and Yaksha’s interaction with the cloud. How do we show it in theatre? Cinema can take recourse to animation but how does theatre turn it into a live experience? One simple solution is choreography. But in an internet, SMS driven age where globalisation in its very ugly form has penetrated into our social fabric there is a way of redefining technology. That realm is our theatre. We try to take up social issues and present the ideological debate by fusing technology with human voice. The true paradox of our age is technology versus life. It is reflected in our theatre.
Question- Your impressions about GFF?
Answer- I think it is an excellent endeavour. for two reasons-there is both classical cinema of resistance and space for modern form. A lot of campus people are taking part in the festival which is a very hearty sign. The questions that came on our play reflected a working of interested minds. I hope this becomes annual.
Question- Your performance brings into play sharp polemics and looks like cast in an activist mould?
Answer- The form of theatre I practice is portable, flexible and free. By ‘free’ I mean that there is a sense of not getting bogged down by big money economics. In a true sense, I think we still need spaces where we discuss Muktibodh, Gorakh Pandey, Benoy Roy, Manik Bandopadhyaya and Bsavanna. There must be a modernity of tradition and tradition of modernity.
Question- What on the future of theatre in electronic-computer age?
Answer- This is the future of theatre to come out of auditoriums and traditional street spaces and create a ‘studio’ space everywhere, from street corner to seminar rooms. The new word is not ‘play’, anymore it is ‘performance-text’
Interviewer: Sudhanshu Tripathi, Editor, ChauriChaura.Com