Prasad Vanarase: I work as a freelance theatre director in India, also as a director of the Academy for Creative Education, which is my own venture. Working in collaboration with other theatre and educational institutions, I take plays and painting, dance and movement into schools in Pune where children come from deprived economic backgrounds and have never seen a play in their lives.
I met Lift (London International Festival of theatre) in a workshop in India in 2002 and found the idea of twenty youngsters actually meeting each other from around fifteen different countries and cultures very attractive. To learn directly about each others communities without having to depend on the media that was the best thing about the proposal. Everyone has stereotype notions about other cultures, after all.
This week, I saw a girl from Cambodia and another from Palestine who can hardly speak English, with a girl from Brazil who doesnt speak English at all...having a really nice time teaching dances to each other God only knows in what language they were communicating. This is just the beginning but if you came to this weeks performance, what struck me as unique was the unrehearsed responses from the youngsters in the discussion with the audience, absolutely off the cuff and very memorable: theirs and theirs alone. That was the best result so far out of all this effort, and something of what I was looking for.
Anand Kulkarni: I am a student and have just taken my twelfth grade exams. Im studying to be an engineer. But I love acting. In the culture from which I come, art is just a part of life. I have been involved in songs, music and plays since I was very young.
Prasad Vanarase: We both come from Maharashtra where theatre is very much a part of everyones life. In a way, going to the theatre is something one has to do. It is treated as a ritual. In every temple you will find a stage facing God. So everyone has to put some colour on his face at least once in a lifetime and go there and speak out the lines!
Anand Kulkarni: I was really excited to come to London to meet other teenagers and young people and talk about childrens rights. I just like the idea. Because it is usually the adults who decide everything. They make the rules and keep on discussing endlessly. Here, it was children from different cultures who had to speak on this topic. The topic was also great: the role of young people as the art makers of tomorrow. We have been talking about how art could change lives.
It was really interesting to see how the fifteen-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was working as an important part of her society. She had the job of distributing medical vaccines to people who needed them, and only two people turned up. So she and other young kids got together and put on a play about measles. After performing the play in various places, they found that thousands of people came to get the medicines so that was really powerful.
It interested me because I had a similar experience. We did a street play for my school and it won a prize, but it was just on the stage at school and people clapping, and thats it. It was like firing shots in the air. Shortly afterwards, we were on a school trip, waiting at the railway station for the train to arrive, and we just decided to actually perform the street play on the street. It was a completely different experience... performing for the beggars and everyone else coming to see our play and responding to it. They could really relate to it. The experience is more one of trust between the actors and the people. And then you really want to help them. It convinced me that you can reach all sorts of people, and you can really change the world through art...
If you can change one mind then the process carries on from there. In our performance this week, everyone was part of the three-day planning process. Some could relate easily to their own culture, and were really excited to talk about it. Some could not. But each contributed in his or her own way. It doesnt matter so much who spoke out on the night but what they said was part of what we have produced between us, together this week. Thats fair enough.
Prasad Vanarase: You remember the girl from Cambodia for three days she said almost nothing but on the night, she said that one line to everybody she was ready to speak. That was the first time we all heard her voice.
Anand Kulkarni: Thats what we want. We just want a chance to express ourselves and speak out freely, without any fear. We are really looking forward to the next get-together. In this debate, the audience in London was just adults. We would like to perform for more children, and why not Maharashtra next time? We would like to mirror everyones reality in these performances so that each one becomes more familiar with their own lives, and their rights and responsibilities too.
For example, this week I have been talking about child labour because it is one thing for Europeans to read about it in foreign papers but quite another to come to my country and see how it actually works. You can see what it means for children to work in factories all day long with no chance of education. They will be absolutely moved by the situation they find themselves in.
Prasad Vanarase: We are planning a play at the moment which is about child labour. There are a few street children who will also be taking part in this production which we will perform in the 132 schools in the Pune Municipal Corporation. It will be a two-way process, so that actors will have a different experience in performing in front of very different audiences, who are in fact, just like them. They will have a chance to see something very different from what they see in cheap Bollywood films or TV. We too can have art forms which speak about ourselves.
The overall project is a network of the over 100 actors who work together, meeting in different places to hold theatre festivals twenty-three in the last two years across Maharashtra. Around 175 plays were selected for performance in those festivals, and what must seem rather extraordinary is that it is all done on funds contributed by the artists themselves.
The artistic community who were in commercial theatre, or who are now in Bollywood, give us their support for this project. One theatre in Bombay was given us free for seven days by the person who manages it. Another famous actor encouraged us to ask all his famous friends for funds and he would make up the necessary difference to mount a festival. You see, actors and actresses who have some profile in Maharashtra, where theatre is a part of life, really think they have to do something for the experimental community theatre which is going on.
And when we talk about experimental work it is amateur, but it is work done with the utmost sincerity. We have a play competition run by the state government. Every year, 450 odd performances take place in 22 centres, who then select one or two plays each to run for a month in Bombay. This played a vital role in the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the actors whom we respect today the stars came from this background. So they understand our collaborative work, and this supports the commercial theatre network in the region. In my region, even popular film stars are very keen to say that they are also in theatre.
As a playwright working in and for this network, I think about each play separately. In 1999 I wrote a prize-winning play for a small community group which had stopped working together for several years and which needed to get back together again. This play wove together seven different stories, with the people involved acting them out. You are not doing just a play. You are re-launching the local group. It was quite a challenge.
Then, something completely different. We have an Arts Academy in Goa, where I was working as Chief of the Repertory Company. They were concerned that nothing much was happening after four years of performing in villages. I chose a Hindi play in a mixture of two dialects very much a traditional, folkish, musical which I chose to take to different parts of India it travelled all over.
My next play is the result of all the discussion which is going on about the relationship between doctors and their patients and the way they behave. We have been asking about the legalities of this relationship and whether or not it should be modelled on a consumer or market relationship. In Indian tradition, the doctor is more than a family doctor he becomes a part of the family. My mother will adapt a book called Behind the Surgeons Mask for a one-man show which I will direct. Now this play involves one clear aim not just to perform it in theatres, but also in homes, and hospitals! So we have very different motives for different plays.
In India in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a major upsurge in street theatre it was a vivid movement. Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably in a later phase, it degenerated into a certain kind of showiness Look at us we do street theatre! If there is no conviction about the issues involved, there is really no point in doing street theatre. OK you go out and talk about child labour or poverty and you get the first prize! But this is not a theatre for social change!
In the late 1980s in Maharashtra, we had a programme in one district where we performed ten or twelve shows every day. We had decided that we would not just go there and perform, but we were going to talk to people. And people certainly come to speak to you! After our first show, one old man came to me in tears and just pushed some tobacco in my hand. Then you feel you have to stay and talk.
We have a Ganesh ten-day festival where we bring the god home and put him on a gold or silver plate and after ten days worship, we take him in procession to the river. Last year for the first time, we tried to do a street play about the condition of our river flowing through the city of Puna. Environmental issues are very strong there.
After one of the shows, a gentleman came up to us, and said to the kids, I tell you, what you do is really good because I lost my cow! She was grazing by the river and suddenly dropped dead. We asked the doctor what had happened, and he said there was a lot of plastic in her stomach. She was not able to tell the difference, and she could smell what was inside it. This kind of interaction gives these children something very precious. It gives them an insight into and a confidence about what they are doing. It is no longer just a street play
Keeping in touch with each other after this week, and bringing more people into the circle, is the main thing now. Who knows how long it will take? It might take five years till we can all get together again. At least in India, we have comparatively easy access to the internet so perhaps you can help us keep the conversation going.
Anand Kulkarni: I feel that we could have a forum on the site where people from around the world can ask us questions, and we can have a discussion with them. In our performance this week, we just had questions from a London audience. That was great. But we would like to do that for everybody!
