Theatre Of Roots: Creating A National Identity By Promoting The Regional Elements

 

“The National School of Drama (NSD) played a significant role in inflecting the nature of a movement that began in search of a new idiom.”

Bhawani Bashir Yasir*

The theatre of roots can only be termed the theatre which has earned its relevance and subjectivity that could earn its popular legitimacy from the people and the regions where it belongs. And that ensures its distinct identity, and indigenous vocabulary by creating a new idiom of theatre in every region. This is significant because in India, the socio-political, cultural, and religious sensitivities, artistic performances and standards vary from region to region.

After Independence in 1947, the Indian theatre practitioners, scholars, and playwrights ‘returned’ to their ‘roots’ in finding their own regional traditional theatrical elements in dances, rituals, festivals, martial arts, popular entertainment, and classical theories of all performing arts, socio-cultural and religious sensitivities, and the national political obligations. Their serious and professional efforts were aimed at creating a “nationalistic theatre movement” that would be different aesthetically and artistically in content, art, and performance from the Westernized theatre established during the pre-independence era or to say during colonial India and prevalent in urban areas at the time.

Everyone involved in Indian theatre in the decade of 1960s and 70s has been part of it, worked against it, promoted it, or criticized it. The purpose of the movement was not to go back to the age-old traditions again but to explore the performing art traditions with a new style, treatment, interpretations, artistic sensibilities with modern thoughts and ideas, political and cultural obligations that could enrich and foster contemporary theatre practices. This was also aimed at bringing out a genre of theatre indigenous by its cultural roots and a representative of theatre with socio-cultural, religious, and political sensitivities of newly emerging India.

The Theatre of Roots — as this movement was known — was a conscious effort to create a work for Indian audiences belonging to rural and urban India, that could give a national identity to Indian theatre. While maintaining distinctive features and characteristics of contemporary theatre, it combined the elements of traditional and regional theatre and the professional standards of modern European theatre as established during the colonial era dominated by colonial ideology and prevalent in urban areas at the time. These efforts were thus aimed at propelling new challenges in content, treatment, dramaturgical structures, visual practices, performer and spectator relationship, aesthetic sensibilities, professional standards, and artistic sensitivities in performance, to make it relevant for the rural and urban audience.

The movement offered a strategy for replacing colonial ideology, in the innovation of the theatre space, designing a performance, and articulating and defining diversities of our rich culture and performing arts that could rightly be acknowledged and propelled on the international scene as ‘contemporary Indian Theatre’.

Exploring and revisiting the traditional art forms with regional cultural sensibilities like Yakshagana, Thang-ta, Pung Cholom, Tamasha, Naqaal, Nachha, Nautanki, Bhavai, Bhand-Pather, Daastaan, Koodiyattam, Jatra, Rasa-Lila, Nata-Kalabazi and other traditional and folk performing art forms shaped with modern theatre practices. Pioneering this theatre of roots movement many celebrated theatre directors and professional practitioners of India including K. N. Panikkar, B. V. Karanth, Habib Tanvir, Rattan Thiyam, Bansi Koul, and Jabar Patel took the lead and were followed by many other young professionally trained directors.

The Pioneers of the Theatre of Roots movement: Habib Tanvir, Rattan Thiyam, B.V. Karanth

As a result, many new writings emerged, challenging the Western writing methods. The post-colonial writers were inspired by the history, mythology, native literature, folklore, and narrative performance cultures of India. They rejected the practice of Western realism in structuring their playwriting. Significantly ‘Theatre of Roots Movement’ contributed to de-colonising Indian theatre practices, and created indigenous theatre idiom in post-colonial India.

In nourishing this movement, which evolved in the post-independence era and travelled all over India, the national cultural bodies like the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), New Delhi, then headed by Dr Suresh Awasthi as its Secretary, who coined the term “Theatre of Roots”, played a significant role. Sangeet Natak Akademi helped it to gain popular recognition on the national level through the organising of national theatre festivals. SNA also, late in decade of 80s, officially patronised the movement to orient young theatre directors for interaction with traditions, emphasizing on rediscovering Indian traditional and folk art forms in contemporary theatre practices with new interpretations.

The National School of Drama (NSD) played a significant role in inflecting the nature of a movement that began in search of a new idiom. Towards the end of the 70s and in the beginning of the 80s, many theatre practitioners from the National School of Drama (NSD) looked back to regional theatre and were passionate about forming their groups. It contributed to Indian theatre in earning international recognition through Bharat Rang Mahotsav (BRM) – which is now an annual international theatre festival, organised by the National School of Drama, New Delhi. This festival has indeed created a National Theatre identity that represents every region, language and performing art forms of modern India.

Without going into the detailed historical evolution of roots theatre in India, I would like to express what I mean by the theatre of roots. My thoughts, concepts, practices and experiences are shaped by Kashmir. Generally, it is said that India is a country of unity in diversity. Every region has its own rich language, literature, history, heritage, and cultural ethos which need to be preserved and respected at par. Officially, Hindi is a national language in India but from the depth of its core, there is no national culture. So, every regional culture and language has its indigenous identity where the theatre of one region is as important as that of the other regions. It needs to be glorified, promoted, preserved, and should prosper with all given challenges of modern theatre sensibility.

Having said that, it is not and cannot be confined to any language of one region but combined with the regional performing art forms vis-à-vis, its, dances, music, costumes, folklore, traditional theatre art forms, the artistic performance, architecture, language, literature, dialects, poetry, history, heritage and above all its regional socio-cultural tradition and religious sensitivities. Only such theatre practices have the energy and spirit to build a national theatre movement abridging the gulf between rural theatre and urban theatre practices and acknowledging its regional identity. This is what once advocated before P. N. Haksar Commission on Cultural Policy of India, after passing out from NSD in 1987.

After passing out from NSD in 1987, I did not choose to stay in Delhi or move to Mumbai but preferred to go back to my roots. In the unpredictable challenges of my region – Kashmir, which has been going through a turbulent situation since the last over 35 years, that started soon after I graduated from NSD, the big challenge before me was to create a space for theatre in that conflict atmosphere.

Having a rich history and heritage of Kashmir in my support I had to make the people believe and practice that a theatre that is rooted in its history, heritage, culture, and traditions can help in building the nation. With that understanding, I had to lead a movement for the popular legitimacy of the theatre of Kashmir from rural to urban level. Through my experience, cultural proximity, and commitment to theatre, I followed my doctrine that “a nation without theatre is a dead nation. It is the theatre which reflects the mind of a nation. It makes a nation wise and vibrant”.

The theatre of any region should be representative of its culture, traditions, rituals, folklore, music, poetry, language and literature, socio-political sensibilities, national aspirations, history, and heritage. That alone can help the theatre to earn its popular legitimacy and national identity and can better be termed as the theatre of the roots.

With this spirit and my professional expertise, I established the first ever theatre repertory in J&K – “Kalakaar Repertory Circle” in 1987, in my hometown Doru-Shahabad, District Anantnag. This repertory participated in the North Zone Theatre Festival of Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1988. To institutionalise the theatre of Kashmir, which had a rich tradition at its back, and to impart professional training to the erstwhile deprived young promising generation, I solely established Ensemble Kashmir Theatre Akademi – EKTA (School of Drama-&-Repertory) in Srinagar in 1988.

The Kashmiri play Aka-Nandun, a Kashmiri legend in poetic form written by many mystic poets, presented in September 1988 was adapted and directed by me for the North Zone Theatre Festival organised by SNA in Simla. It was a land-mark production, imbibed strongly in the contours, concept, and spirit of theatre of roots. For the first time, I used the traditional and singing elements of performing arts of Kashmir like Daastaan as its narrative part and popular folk elements of Bacha-Nagma, Dhambali dance and Rouve dance, combined and assimilated with the modern theatre practices in the production design and performativity. The same play was later performed in the International Theatre Olympic Festival, organised by NSD in 2018, at Sri-Ram Centre New Delhi, thus travelling a new milestone in the history of the theatre movement of Kashmir.

I would like to make a special mention of “Badshah Pather”, an adaptation of King Lear, directed by M. K. Raina and performed by “Kashmir Bhagat Theatre Akingam”, founded by SNA awardee Mohd. Subhan Bhagat. The performance of this classic play by the folk artists of Kashmir helped them not only to induce in them a vision of the theatre of roots but also helped them to build their professional and artistic standards within the parameters of folk tradition as well.

Our two recent productions of EKTA — “The Country Without A Post Office” and “The Black Calendar”, both directed by Muzamil Hayat Bhawani, (NSD Alumni) became the new departure in the history of Theatre of Roots in Kashmir. Both these productions, performed in many prestigious national festivals of India, reflect life in Kashmir after 1990 and have been critically acknowledged with all appreciation for contemporary popular theatre of Kashmir.

The theatre of roots movement has come a long way from the movement of the sixties. It has turned out to be more rooted in present-day rural life than in classical, traditional, and folk art forms. Now its content, the style of performance, and the productions are based more on symbolic neo-realism than naturalism or conventional realism. But still, it has been able to explore its roots in its design, style, and performance.

To substantiate my opinion, I would like to refer to the recently produced Bengali play “Fele Asha Megahertz” written and directed by Bhaskar Mukherjee, produced by Thakurnagar Pratidhwani Sanskritik Sanastha and performed at Tagore Hall Srinagar on February 19, 2024 on the occasion of Bharat Rang Mahotsav of National School of Drama.

The play, by all means, was completely rooted in the soil of rural Bengal where Radio has been playing an important role in shaping their socio-cultural and political life. The design was very creative but simply assimilated from the rural stuff as available and provided by the artists themselves. Its content, performance, and design carried with it the identity of contemporary Bengali theatre and made a strong impact on theatre practitioners that no creative and rooted theatre would need any heavy budget but the commitment to the art of theatre.

In short, by Theatre of Roots, I believe in and practice the theatre which belongs to the people of the regions where it belongs and is owned by the people with pride.

*Bhawani Bashir Yasir is a poet, playwright, writer, and a nationally reputed theatre director. He pioneered the rural theatre movement in Kashmir, written 35 acclaimed plays, and acted in several films.

—–