Jana Sanskriti

Forum Theatre and Democracy in India

Sanjoy Ganguly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136978630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático

Jana Sanskriti Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, based in West Bengal, is probably the largest and longest lasting Forum Theatre operation in the world. It was considered by Augusto Boal to be the chief exponent of his methodology outside of its native Brazil.

This book is a unique first-hand account - by the group's artistic director Sanjoy Ganguly - of Jana Sanskriti's growth and development since its founding in 1985, which has resulted in a national Forum Theatre network throughout India. Ganguly describes the plays, people and places that have formed this unique operation and discusses its contribution to the wider themes espoused by Forum Theatre.

Ganguly charts and reflects on the practice of theatre as politics, developing an intriguing and persuasive case for Forum Theatre and its role in provoking responsible action. His combination of anecdotal insight and lucid discussion of Boal's practice offers a vision of far-reaching transformation in politics and civil society.

1
Celebrating the rehearsal of revolution

A historical profile of Jana Sanskriti Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed

Jana Sanskriti: key facts

Jana Sanskriti is based in a rural location outside Kolkata, West Bengal. Established by Sanjoy Ganguly in 1985, it now has a training and administrative base at Girish Bhavan, Badu, named after Sri Girish Chandra Ghosh, a playwright, director, actor, lyricist and music composer in 19th-century Bengal.

Figure 1.1 Jana Sanskriti core team rehearsing at Girish Bhavan

A core team supports ad hoc satellite teams located in many villages, who not only perform existing or new Forum plays as and when necessary, but have also – like the core team – become much-trusted key figures in village and district democracy and liaison. It has reached more than 250,000 spectators in West Bengal alone. Most participants are voluntary; funding for core activities including administrative support comes from various domestic sources and through performances and workshops abroad. Jana Sanskriti has established links with and provided training for further teams in Orissa, Tripura, Bihar, Jharkand, Rajasthan, Uttarranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi and Mumbai. Members of these teams regularly visit Girish Bhavan for further training, and all come together to debate policy and practice in twice-yearly meetings of the Indian Federation of the Theatre of the Oppressed, established in 2006. Jana Sanskriti has also organized three festivals of Forum Theatre, together with seminars and workshops, attended by international practitioners.

Key dates

1985	First phase in villages
1985	Development of first teams in villages
1986	Foundation of core team
1997	Construction of Mukta Manch (outdoor theatre) at Digambarpur, Sunderbans

1998	Creation of first teams outside West Bengal
2002	First all-women teams
2002	Development of village-level committees
2004	International Festival of Forum Theatre
2006	International Festival of Forum Theatre
2008	International Festival of Forum Theatre
2006	Inauguration of Indian Association of the Theatre of the Oppressed

Boal and Forum Theatre

Figure 1.2 Boal, Ganguly

The 1970s saw the rise of autocratic military regimes in some countries of South America including Brazil, often supported by neo-imperialist forces from outside. Civil liberties were severely restricted. Augusto Boal had been directing plays for Arena theatre in São Paulo in Brazil since 1965. In 1970 Boal’s ‘People’s Cultural Centre’ was directly attacked by the Establishment. Boal was kidnapped by the police, sent to prison and subjected to inhuman atrocities. He moved to several countries of South America – Peru, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia – but could not escape the eyes of the dictators. Ultimately he sought refuge in France. In spite of all odds Boal never stopped thinking about and experimenting with theatre. It

was during these troubled times that he wrote his celebrated book Theatre of the Oppressed, which made him well known to theatre workers all over the world. In 1971 in Argentina, the chief form of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Forum Theatre, was first performed.

In Forum Theatre an event of oppression or torture is enacted. Here facts are the only material for drama. Fiction has no role to play in such theatre. Actors on stage enact an event where the distinction between the oppressor and the oppressed is clearly marked. Boal projects a concrete situation in order to motivate the audience to find out ways of ending this oppression. There is no place for passive spectators in Boal’s theatre. Here spectator becomes ‘spectactor’.

In Forum Theatre, members of the theatre team select, construct and narrate a social problem from their daily life. With artistic direction this play is taken to an audience who must now find a solution to the problem posed in it. The play is first performed as an ordinary play. After the performance, an important member of the Forum process, whom Boal calls ‘Joker’ – the word also means anchor in Portuguese – comes on stage and initiates a dialogue between the actors and the spectators. The Joker constantly inspires spectators to come on stage and perform the role of the oppressed characters in a way he or she may think will stop the oppression. Passive spectators thus become engaged spectactors. The spectactors must replace only the protagonist who is facing oppression. Spectactors come on stage to enact the solutions they offer, debating with trained actors/activists who pose various questions about the solutions suggested. Usually this process continues for at least two or three hours. In the past people have constructed many solutions to problems posed on stage. At the same time people have also reached dead ends in the search for a solution. In both cases, individuals have publicly engaged in fighting a problem that had thus far provoked the most profound silence and acceptance. The social conflict instigated onstage suggests possibilities for social conflict offstage. This rehearsal on the stage becomes an inspiration for the actors and spectators to work out solutions for themselves with the aim of ending all kinds of oppression in real life. ‘Acting’ on stage is transformed into ‘Action’ in life. In Theatre of the Oppressed Boal writes: ‘the practice of these theatrical forms creates a sort of uneasy sense of incompleteness that seeks fulfillment through real action’. Marx said that philosophers have mostly tried to explain how the world functions, but what is most important is a philosophy that can change the world. In describing the special nature of Forum Theatre, Boal says that it does not stop at criticizing the character alone. The spectator changes the characters of the play and acting becomes a ‘practice of action’.

Aspects of Bengali theatre history

Bengal has a long intellectual, artistic and theatrical tradition which includes various blends of theatre and politics. The book highlights some of these, notably Girish Chandra (see Box ‘Jana Sanskriti: key facts’, p. 1), who in the late 19th century brought theatre out of the elite private spaces of newly created feudal landlords and the ‘liberal’ intelligentsia surrounding Rabindranath Tagore into some part of the public domain; and IPTA, the Indian People’s Theatre Association, founded during the 1940s and strongly linked to the Communist Party of India, which developed the art of ‘street theatre’ in largely propagandist plays (see Seagull Theatre Quarterly, 20, for an excellent selection of articles about street theatre in India). Badal Sircar, a noted director and trainer, extended this work to ‘free’ (or nearly free) theatre addressing specific, usually political, issues. Utpal Dutt, another well-known Marxist Bengali playwright and thinker, wrote mostly for more ‘conventional’ theatre spaces (in the western sense). Probhir Guha’s Alternative Living Theatre did some theatre work for a time in the 1990s in similar locations around Kolkata to Jana Sanskriti. None of these however have done interactive theatre and activist political and social work in quite the same way as Jana Sanskriti, or drawn on elements of traditional folk arts in order to engage to the same extent with rural communities and the range of central issues which affect their lives.

In the 19th century proscenium theatre was not disconnected at all from folk theatre. The British government had to come up with a law called the Drama Control Act (1878) to stop theatre, as it was inspiring people to act against the colonial rulers. The law still exists officially, like many other oppressive laws introduced by the British.

A number of theatre artists left IPTA in the mid-1950s and many of them started their own theatre groups. This was called the Group Theatre movement. Like IPTA, it was mainly confined to the middle class and to urban Kolkata. These group theatres never approved of any form of theatre except proscenium, which was the only form of theatre existing even before the British came. There are still many groups in Kolkata of this kind: most actors are not professional, though many noted directors now appear in television serials. In the 1960s and 1970s people witnessed strong commitment among the actors and directors in Group Theatres, but such commitment is very rare now.

The middle class in the 1960s and 1970s were very different from nowadays, being in solidarity with the works movemt. Theatre in those

days was very anti-establishment in nature. In 1977 the Communist Party of India (Marxist) came into power with some other leftist parties. The allies of CPI(M) were parasites from the very beginning; it was never a united front government in the true sense, the domination of CPI(M) was throughout very strong, as it is today. (CPI(M) has now been in power for 32 years. The only other state in India where Communist parties have held power is Kerala, which has a similarly strong intellectual tradition to West Bengal; perhaps because it has much higher levels of education, power has however shifted more frequently. Kerala also has strong, if mainly highly traditional, theatre resources.) The directors and actors in Group Theatres were strongly committed to the Communist parties. So the Group Theatre movement started to change its character, no longer being critical of the establishment or state or government. Now Group Theatres in Kolkata find that their audience is decreasing. Very often they blame the audience for being addicted to television, forgetting that the same spectators had been their critical appreciators throughout the history of Bengali theatre.

2008 was a memorable year for the Group Theatre movement in Kolkata. Some directors removed their support from the left in state power, responding to the struggles of the farmers against the forcible land acquisition policy of the government for industry. But the rebels are talking about change in government only. The government is likely to be changed by the people in the next election and our artist friends are now allying themselves with the forthcoming new power. They are not talking about change in political culture. The culture of monologue, corruption and violence is hardly criticized.

Initial phases: in the villages

31 May 1985

Dear Naresh,

I hope you are well. You have asked me how I am spending my days. I do not know exactly what to say … All kinds of thoughts come to my mind nowadays. I never used to think like this before. I read somewhere that it is not until you reach the top of the hill that you realize yours was not the only path. If only it did not take so long to realize these things. Anyway, let me tell you about some of my thoughts, some of my experiences.

In South Kolkata, near Ballyganj railway station there is a large slum. A number of us meet there on Sundays and holidays. Except for me all the others work for a Ballyganj-based NGO. The people who live in these slums have come from different areas of the 24 Parganas¹ that fall under the Sunderban Development Authority. They are not alike. Those who come from the vicinities of the Sunderbans² have an intimate relationship with rivers and the jungles that grow on the swamps. Those who come from near the railway tracks have no link with water and marshy land. They are heavily influenced by Kolkata. These diverse people, some from villages near the city, some from remote areas, have come together in this slum, tied together now by a common struggle for daily existence.

In the villages there is not enough work to keep them busy for the whole year. So they are in the city now in search of a living. Some work as domestic labour, some are wage workers on construction sites. A few are hired by pandal³ decorators, some work in small food shops. From multi-storied buildings to the metro rail – nothing in Kolkata could have been built without their contribution, yet they live in an area of indescribable filth. If one had not seen this slum, it would have been difficult to imagine that even in the twentieth century, human beings could live in such putrid, foul-smelling and unhygienic circumstances.

Pashupati is a well-known figure in the slum. He has easy access to everyone – from the important persons in the ruling party to the leadership of the NGO which is implicitly against the party in power. Because of his intelligence Pashupati is recognized as the most reliable person here. How does one explain the source of his intelligence? This was a million-dollar question. Because Pashupati is illiterate. You know how in our party we used to value those who were good in their studies or those who came from aristocratic families. But this man – Pashupati – has neither a certificate from a school nor the stamp of a well-known family. I suppose you can guess the question that naturally comes to me.

The wide world outside is unknown to me, but I had no idea that in the corners of our own familiar city, there were patches of such intense darkness. I might have known this in the abstract, but the actual experience was traumatic; it unleashed a flood in my mind. I had always known that in the dialectic between insoluble problems on the one hand and the attempt to surmount them on the other lies the key to human development. But what struck me here is the abundant presence of human qualities among people who are struggling for survival every waking moment of their lives. Poverty does not necessarily erode human values – my experience is fast bringing me to this position. All of you who are so involved in economic movements could perhaps think a little about it.

Twenty years ago we did not know the answer to that million-dollar question. The closer we came ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• About the book
• Speech by Boal
• Editor’s preface
• 1 Celebrating the rehearsal of revolution
• 2 Boal’s theatre
• 3 Boal’s poetics as politics
• 4 Theatre as rehearsal of future political action
• 5 Beyond West Bengal
• 6 Beyond India
• 7 The politics of collective thinking
• 8 Aesthetics and ethics
• 9 Reflections and prospects
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index