Tentative beginnings

What does theatre have to do with the IT revolution? A recent seminar in Kolkata sought to highlight the advantages of a partnership between the two. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN writes.

AN uneasy pairing? I expected the Hutchison Telecom JV seminar on "Theatre in the Context of the New IT Era" (June 24, Kolkata) to be just that. Particularly as the participating theatre persons knew little of Information Technology, and the techies had less hands-on experience of theatre.

And yet, as in arranged marriages in India, the participants managed to develop some compatibility by the end of the day in this first-time venture of its kind, the result of something rarely seen in seminars: the speakers were as interested in listening as in sharing their own perspectives.

The panel was tilted towards artistes - film makers Aparna Sen and Ashoke Viswanathan; Mohan Agashe, actor and director of the Film and Television Institute, Pune. Theatre/film critic and litterateur Samik Bandyopadhyay steered the show, with director/actor Vijaya Mehta, now chairperson of NCPA, delivering a keynote worthy of her eminence in the field. Dr. Suparno Choudhuri and Ram Ray represented IT and advertising.

Mehta began with apprehensions. After all, IT is the invasive alien in our private worlds, gaining mesmeric ascendancy over mind and body. The great influences seeping into our arts are from instant communication which casts impersonality over human interactions, and the encroachment of television. "But theatre will continue to remain a social necessity," she said, because television can never rise beyond personal indulgence. While this makes people comfortable and smug, theatre stimulates enquiry, protest and sensitivity.

Shifts in audience tastes and needs dictate changes in the theatre. But the fast pace of life makes it difficult for theatre groups to work long hours together to reach excellence. So - as in the other arts - theatre too finds itself with plays of diminished layers and textures. Corporate and government funding is no answer to the fall in standards.

Dr. Mohan Agashe agreed that IT's explosive speed and modalities of communicating information had revolutionised our methods of reception. We acquire in 30 years what it took 60 years to accumulate earlier. Such assimilation of information cerebrally through the simulated pathways of virtual reality takes its toll. When oral tradition and one's own life experience were sources of information in the past, they also gratified the needs of matter and sense. Technology starved the senses, blurred borders between the real and the unreal. By the greater possibilities it offered for manipulating sound and image, IT also tampered with the information conveyed.

Result? Imbalance between emotional and mental needs; more importantly between our need and our greed in the dil mange more culture of our times. Like Mehta, Agashe too expressed reservations about corporate control of culture.

Agashe concluded on a note of speculation: Was homo sapiens in a transition phase - of evolving into something else altogether? Was the new species going to apprehend emotions through the head after all, and not the heart? Will theatre have to discover new ways of processing experience and information to survive in a different era?

Do not fault IT for theatre's loss of substance, said Ashoke Viswanathan. The problem lay deeper within ourselves. On the one hand we had lost our capacity to dream and to communicate; on the other we lacked the passion to fire creativity. Humour is a casualty as standardisation replaces the heterogeneity on which theatre thrives.

Aparna Sen suggested that audiences could be sensitised once again to the arts if trained theatrepersons worked in TV, making better programmes instead of shunning it. Meanwhile, good middle- of-the road cinema and theatre were essential to combat TV addiction.

Physicist Dr. Suparno Choudhuri focussed on the advantages: digital technology could greatly improve light and acoustics, and multimedia could be explored for interactive experience on stage. In dotcoms, technical experts could only improve methods of presentation, the content depended on creative minds. The same principle could be applied to experiments in the theatre. Finally Ram Ray showed how the Internet is an invaluable aid in gaining information on theatre across the globe. You can learn about theatre companies and festivals, even view scenes to select your play in Broadway or the West End, and book your tickets in advance. You can read theatre journals, find out about drama schools and courses, with possibilities of distance learning.

Nine commentators from different fields (physics, social science, theatre, journalism) had both postive and negative reactions to share, one of them saw the endeavour as an exercise in futility, a five-star show.

Part of Odeon 2001, a theatre festival which featured three plays - "Nilkantha" (Bengali), "Khubsurat Bahu" (Hindi) and "Dance Like a Man" (English) - the seminar saw the tentative beginnings of interchange between people of differing worlds, and the possibilities of enriching crossovers. Almost everyone felt the need to harness IT to aid creative experimentation, to enhance the awareness of the real experience of art.

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