What happens when a group of women decide to let go of all the negativity surrounding them and embrace the positive? They tap into their potential and unleash the power to make art. This is what a group of 25 women have been doing in a cosy Tollygunge studio. As part of The Creative Arts (TCA) — a performing arts group founded by Ramanjit Kaur that also incorporates therapy — these women are now taking their production, Beyond Borders, to the 8th Theatre Olympics, being held in Jaipur. t2 dropped by to chat with Ramanjit, the director of the play and the artistic director of TCA, about Beyond Borders, theatre and therapy, before they stage their play on March 25 in Jaipur. Excerpts:

Tell us a little about Beyond Borders...

At TCA, our work is inspired by our surroundings and we are currently living in the chaos that is happening in the world with immigration and refugees. The journey started from there and it’s an amalgamation of oral stories, personal and written histories and short stories from all over the world by writers, poems by poets from Gulzar to Neal Hall and a huge tapestry is woven where we are talking beyond borders of nationality, caste, colour, religion, gender, race, ethnicity and finally, the mind and body. The play can be hard-hitting, just like life; yet it is light as well, just like life!

What is the process that you take the performers through?

Twenty-five women are doing everything from onstage to backstage and the languages used in this play are English, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Marwari. We don’t ever write down anything on paper or a computer when it comes to the script. The stories kept coming up and we just kept creating on the floor. The dialogues change almost every day because maybe I am not finding the rhythm or the metre or they are not tight enough. So even in the last month, a lot of things have changed. It was staged in May 2017 for the first time and took about three months to ready it and another three months for the research and development of the script.

My actors keep asking me what to do and I tell them to suggest. Till they don’t create something, I don’t give anything. The show could be four days away and they could be crying their hearts out because they have shared six stories and I haven’t responded to anything. I am almost a sadist when I do that (laughs). But I always know that it will happen and the day there is an outburst of emotion, something great in creative terms happens the very next day. 

The Creative Arts is also about therapy for women…

We normally don’t realise that the privileged strata would need help. But when a group of people came and asked me to start theatre classes for them in 2011, I didn’t agree. When these women insisted that I do a course, I said, “My theatre is about baring yourself. It’s very tough and you belong to the world of Prada and Jimmy Choo and are not made for it.” I wondered how they would get rid of that and become naked in terms of emotions and then try to heal and find themselves. Once the course started, I said, “We’ll give it six months.” But in that course of time, I realised there was so much pain among the so-called privileged class of women. They will dress up, apply their red lipstick and say they are fine. The pain was so excruciating as they faced domestic violence, dowry, abuse and sometimes even prostitution.

So I formally launched this course for women where we used theatre as therapy, using games and exercises I had learnt to create a catharsis within the participant. I have also been teaching them communication skills to use in their personal and social lives. So of all the participants who have attended the course in the last few years, which is more than 200 people, everyone hasn’t ended up continuing with theatre but a lot of them had a lot of other talents. We have even helped some set up businesses. 

Since starting in 2011, how has the cathartic process evolved?

The journey for the first group was very, very tough and I told them that if they did it, others would follow. The first batch had tremendous problems from family, a lot of challenges and objections and faced a lot of stuff. By the second year, the families reached a point where they were like, “Don’t even talk about The Creative Arts.” But the numbers increased. By the third year, some faith was getting restored that it was not just about women empowerment but also about empowering human beings and empowering families by making the women happy so that they could create healthier relationships back home.

By the fourth year, I had some spouses who were in touch with me, taking counselling privately. In the fifth year, some of the male partners wanted to know if I was starting a course for them. I wish I could but the timing goes off. So there’s a positive response now as people know what TCA is about. 

What is a regular day here like?

I have two classes a week where I train them, which could be two to three hours each day. Apart from that, I try to get all kinds of trainers for them. It could be a philosophical speaker, an author, a painter, designer, sculptor, a Kalaripayattu martial artist or a Japanese butoh master. We go to a lot of art exhibitions and performances as part of our study and come back and analyse them. So it’s an exposure on many levels. Theatre is an amalgamation of all art forms and therefore the exposure required is also a lot. 

So what’s next?

Normally we move on to a different production but this time, we have decided to stick to Beyond Borders and keep developing that, change stories and take this forward. I want to travel more with this and keep working on this because I feel talking about these issues is the need of the hour.