Right after Independence, the cultural melting pot of Delhi bloomed into a seat of theatre in an unprecedented way. In her paper “Theatre at Delhi Today” in the Sahitya Akademi-published journal Indian Literature volume in 1958, the late author and educator Muriel Wasi, who taught English at Delhi’s Jesus and Mary and St Stephen’s colleges, writes, “It is hard to believe that the capital of India that was noticeably free of cultural activity before 1947 should have flowered into a city that is now in danger of being altogether too ‘cultural’.” She further writes of how unlike the other arts: painting, sculpture, music and dance, which “suffered some setbacks during the centuries in which creative art bowed to political manouvring, but no art has suffered the almost complete eclipse that overtook drama. To talk of drama as an art by itself and as distinct from dance and music with which it has been so closely linked up, is neither realistic nor historical”…“theatre at Delhi presents us with the not uninteresting and instructive spectacle of an art seeking to stand up by itself and to incorporate into its growing forms what it needs of the sister arts, without endangering its claims to be theatre per se.” The Delhi stage is a later phenomenon, what came before “were a large number of rather formless, abortive amateur theatrical groups”.
Cut to the COVID-19 pandemic that pushed big stage theatre productions online. But digital theatre cannot hold a candle to street theatre and proscenium theatre with its communal-viewing experience, and their aficionados ran to them once the world opened up. From epidemics to wars and national partitions, when misfortunes befall, the arts are the first to get impacted and, in them, theatre almost always runs the risk of being relegated to obscurity more than other art forms.
The eventual cultural renaissance in Delhi saw many theatre groups mushroom and the stage was set, not just for homegrown plays but for groups from the other cities to come and perform, to entertain and create social awareness with their styles of storytelling. Delhi’s Mandi House area became the cultural hub as the national capital aaded one theatre event after another on its annual cultural calendar: Little Theatre Group (LTG), the National School of Drama’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav, META Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra’s annual Ramayana, the Delhi Theatre Festival. Not too far were Akshara Theatre, Siri Fort, India Habitat Centre, India International Centre and Purana Qila. The stage is set at a new hot spot. Sandwiched between Dussehra and Diwali, this month, a new theatre festival at the gorgeously manicured lawns of the open public park of south Delhi’s historic Sunder Nursery will keep the mood of Delhiites upbeat, all thanks to philanthropist Kiran Nadar.
In 2010, Nadar put on Delhi’s cultural map a gallery to house her vast collections of South Asian art (around 15,000 pieces) with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). A small selection of her collection is currently being shown in a major exhibition at the Barbican cultural centre in London, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998. Back in her motherland, in the national capital of the former British colony, KNMA is gearing up to present its inaugural KNMA Theatre Festival between October 14 and 20.
The festival expands on KNMA’s commitment to multidisciplinary artistic expression and the museum’s established programming around dance and music, such as the Legacy Series, Centre Stage festival and and KNMA in the Park. The KNMA chairperson and founder, Kiran Nadar says, the inaugural edition is “a pivotal moment in our journey to expand into the realm of contemporary performing arts. This festival not only showcases the richness of India’s diverse cultural narratives but also creates a vital platform for dialogue around pressing societal issues through theatre. As we move towards establishing dedicated performing arts spaces in our new museum, this festival represents our commitment to fostering a deeper connection between the arts and the community, enriching Delhi's cultural landscape in the process.”
Centred around the theme of “The Power of Vulnerability”, the festival — open to public (tickets available on Insider.in), and free entry (with registration) for students — will witness 13 plays being staged over six days, across linguistic barriers, from English to Hindi and regional languages.
Bengaluru-based actor, director and filmmaker Kirtana Kumar, who is the festival’s curator, has put together plays that explore new material and elicit conversations about how plays are being made today. The focus, this edition, is on contemporary theatre — theatrical forms, languages, and issues.
No theatre festival in Delhi is complete without Katkatha’s Anurupa Roy. Katkatha hosts India’s only international puppet film festival, Puppetoscope and the Puppet Fringe. This time, too, she will stage her directorial The Nights, which will follow the opening performance on October 14, Beesu Kamsale from Bengaluru at 6 pm. The Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust will present The Nights directed by Roy, that reimagines the Syrian, Chinese and Indian versions of the tales from One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), in English and Hindi. Enchanted Walk, on October 19, is another immersive puppet presentation into a world of insects.
The theme of ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ is an interesting one in our post-Covid times. Kirtana, who’s been writing a paper on vulnerability in the context of post-colonialism and the rehearsal room, expands on that thought for the festival, bringing in such groups, from the vulnerable margins of the performative forms, that rarely catch the national limelight. Afforded a negative connotation in a perfection-seeking society, being vulnerable is beautiful and rebellious. It is a phase of cloudy chaos before any kind of creativity takes shape.
Presented by Bengaluru’s Karnataka Janapada Kamsale Kalavidara Sangha and led by M Lingaiah, Beesu Kamsale, which will be again staged on October 16, is an acrobatic folk form of the Halu Kuruba community men of Malé Mahadeshwara hills, whose subaltern deity is Malé Mahadeshwara, near the Mysuru regions of Chamrajnagar and Mandya. A brass kamsale, a disc-like Cymbal, is used as an accompaniment. Kirtana’s curatorial note states, “What is fascinating in Beesu Kamsale is the quality of the movement. Performed only by men and highly acrobatic, the plying of wrists while using the kamsale is in itself delicate, laasya, ‘feminine’. The sort of movements used in kolaata and dandiya raas...”
Also, on the opening day, October 16, Love and Information by Mohit Takalkar, presented by Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) and Aasakta, will zoom into the social-media scrolling times and screen saturation that human beings have reached, touching upon themes such as loss of memory, genuine emotions and privacy. Abhi Tambe’s Portal Waiting, on October 17, is storytelling in the form of a rock show.
The final act on the closing day will be Vali Vadha, taking the audiences back to the episode of Rama killing Bali in Aranyakanda of the Ramayana. Following the spectacular Malayalam film Kishkindha Kaandam which released some weeks ago and metaphorically and symbolically referred to this episode, it might be a good time for a retour to the epic.
Not to be missed, also on the closing day, October 20, are two powerful solo performances by two women: wepushthesky by Nisha Abdulla on friendships lost and found, by coalescing song, story, myth and history. And Savita Rani’s script-less, devised act, Notion(s): In Between You & Me, on a woman’s fight against gender and race, religion and caste.
The festival will also include a workshop (by Barbara Lutz and Prof. Christoph Scheurle from Germany), a lecture demonstration, and a symposium navigating the phenomenon of post-pandemic contemporary Indian theatre. The speakers for which will include former NSD director Anuradha Kapur; Mumbai’s Bhasha Centre founder-director Vivek Madan; director-scholar Abhilash Pillai; dramaturg and performance historian Amanda Culp (specialising on the theatrical after-lives of Sanskrit drama), among others.
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