Sarangi Soni’s debut is where its heart is but unfortunately good intentions alone don’t necessarily translate into good theatre. Directed by Lalit Parimoo DAAYARA, which is supossed to be theatre group Natsamaj’s first major production premiered on 27th June 2008. One of the key activities of the group is to workshop with NGOs. Their concept of Acting workshops is deified as Abhinaya Yog and its earnest team (mostly made up of young people it seems) appear way too idealistic about it. The play is proof of that.
Imagine a textbook model of do-good theatre workshops being applied to the stage and you’ll figure out what the play is all about. Sudhir (Kunal Mehta), an impassioned young theatre person takes leave of his girlfriend to seek and live the drama of real life. To that end he befriends people in one of the ubiquitous slums of Mumbai and gets them to act. Sudhir firmly believes that the process of Acting will redeem poor and unfortunate souls. After all thieves and terrorists are also human beings. The stage will reveal to them their foibles and their strengths and as such their lives will become better. In short Sudhir believes that Acting is the supreme tool to help needy people with.
If this sounds like a case study in theatre workshopping it very well is! Were it not for the young actors’ enthusiasm and their passionate belief in what theatre is capable of, the play would have started to grate with its stereotypical characters and stock situations. There is a genuine attempt on the part of the writer as well as the director to naturalize the experiences that they have likely to have had in their workshops but the result is a cloying story. It appears that the plot is only a means to convey the writer’s belief in the therapy of theatre.
In itself the theme is driven by only what can account for a good cause. There is a whole body of theatre, not to mention its long history that falls under what is broadly known as Applied Drama. Over the years different schools of thought and practices have emerged in this area and while some of them have been successful, not all of them have. The point in this case is that the play might work in a back-thumping session of theatre workshop conductors. But to let loose its lofty aims on an unsuspecting audience and to seal that with clumsy warm-up exercises as they happen in workshop situations is a bit too much.
For a first full-length play Sarangi at least appears to have a fair command on the language in the play. There is both- a literary and a spoken quality to the Hindi she uses and her actors in spite of their typecast characters are able to hold attention. A more benovelent mood might just get you by the sheer naivety of it all.
*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre & Performance Studies.
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