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Most would agree that temperamentally we Indians are intensely volatile. There is high drama in every day of our lives and certainly in our political arenas. Even nature tends to be dramatic when it comes to the sub-continent. Let’s take the last few weeks. First there was considerable drama over an ordinance which was described as a piece of nonsense to be torn up. Then Sachin Tendulkar announced his retirement. Nothing dramatic about it — it was long expected, long awaited and long speculated upon. But did you see the dramatic headlines in the newspapers the following day? They ranged from “India will never be the same again”, “Cricket needs another God” to “God-bye”. One reader picked up his morning newspaper and was devastated to see the words, “The Void”, writ large on the front page over a forlorn picture of the cricketer. His feeling of shock at such an untimely death was thankfully dispelled when he read further to discover what had actually happened. All this drama around us, yet theatre is not appropriately used as a tool in education. And let us not miss the irony because every schoolteacher will tell you that every day of her working life is packed with high drama. Some years ago, Stephen King had commented, “Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.” But merely dealing with teenagers — and tweenagers (I would like to add) — is both trying and terrific.
One of the exhilarating aspects of a schoolteacher’s work is that her classroom always has drama within its walls. The teacher, if she is worth her salt, is expected to have some mastery of the art of abhinaya which means ‘to take the audience (in her case, the students) closer to the meaning’. From the moment the teacher walks in, the atmosphere is charged and the class dynamics are activated.
But alas, drama is not taught and learnt as it should be in school or at university. The status of theatre in education in our country (and elsewhere) is indicated in Ananda Lal’s recently updated article, “The Curtain Rises: Drama in Departments of English in India”. He explains that it is usually the texts of plays that are taught under the literary genre of ‘drama’. So far as schools are concerned, the English Literature syllabus of the board examinations requires the study of at least one classical play say by Shakespeare, Shaw, Oscar Wilde or Ibsen. Theatre, however, is rarely studied from the perspective of staged productions. Yet the ultimate experience of drama is that of the spectator or the audience and not of the reader. The argument perhaps is that the text of a play always ‘outlasted its performance’. For instance, Daphne du Maurier proclaims, “We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poets and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.” But only those who have been through the process of staging a play will understand the rich educational dividends that are earned from it.
Schools do put up annual concerts or plays while inter-school fests include one-act play contests and other competitions which require on-the-spot enactments. The hugely talented Katy Lai has helped city schools to stage plays and musical extravaganzas based on well-known Broadway or West End productions. The British Council, Calcutta, has been organizing inter-school drama contests for decades, and for some years now, Padatik has been doing so very successfully. Excellent workshops are held to guide students through script writing; getting into the skin of the characters; designing costumes, props and accessories, and importantly, the use of space, movement, dance and music, light and sound. Teachers and students who are involved in such theatre-related activities cannot say enough about their overwhelming learning experience, from the evolution of the script, in the case of an original play, to the finished production on stage.
The extraordinarily gifted Zarin Chaudhuri, who teaches drama in our school, claims that she is not good at teaching script-writing but every year she manages to produce a most commendable original play irrespective of the calibre of the students who sign up for her classes. She does not turn anybody away hence there are no auditions. Zarin’s principles are simple and few —children must have fun and enjoy each experience, they should share thoughts, stories and memories and they must have a large space and plenty of freedom. Children must never be corrected; rather they should be guided by suggestions. They must feel equal to each other and never feel competitive. In fact, Zarin consciously teaches them not to upstage one another. Every aspect of what is done in their theatre classes is explained so that nobody ever does or says anything that she has not understood. The costuming phase is great fun and children are encouraged to be resourceful and work with items of clothing that they have ‘found’. Minimal sets or props are used, while for sound effects, bricks, stones, paper and the like serve to create rhythm and atmosphere. Rather than playing recorded music, children sing or play an instrument. Most importantly, Zarin believes that there should not be any tests or marks in this sphere of creative activity.
A theatre class in school usually begins with physical and vocal warm-ups to bring focus on the session to follow. ‘Quick responses, keen observation and quick creation’ are taught through theatre games, which also help to shed inhibitions. Sometimes very shy students who just about whisper their lines at the first attempts are tried out in ‘bold’ parts and many a time a full-fledged actor is born. Apart from acquiring and developing oratory skills, voice control, love of language, interest in reading and writing, concentration, dedication and imagination, young people learn to work in a team. They learn that every facet is equally important for the success of the final performance. I remember during an important performance the student who was ‘curtain manager’ dropped the curtain just before the final vital lines had been delivered. A puzzled audience had started applauding dutifully when the curtain manager, realizing her mistake, quickly raised the curtain to reveal an unsuspecting clutch of actors in total disarray. The curtain manager was in the doghouse for days thereafter.
We understand why theatre is considered the most complete of art forms. It incorporates so many disciplines — language, music, dance, visual spectacle, technology and design. Besides, it can serve as a link between all the subjects that are taught. When theatre students were asked formally how their theatre experiences had made a difference in their overall academic performance, the responses ranged from having learnt ‘to think differently’ to having learnt that ‘everything connects’. For many, theatre is the medium through which they have gained a voice. My colleagues and I are often astonished by the magical transformation on stage of a child who is hardly noticed in class.
In spite of it being such a powerful art form, theatre is least utilized in school education. Rohit Pombra of Stagecraft gave me some details of the Theatre in Education movement in India. TIE is helping teachers, trainers, therapists, team leaders and managers across various industries and professions in becoming better workers and leaders with positive attitudes. But we have to accept that unlike media studies, mass communication or film courses, theatre does not give a direct entry into the job market nor does it facilitate admissions into college or professional institutions barring the lone National School of Drama. Therefore, we regularly find that parents who have enjoyed watching their star children performing on stage do not allow them to be involved in such ‘distracting activities’ during a public examination year.
It is encouraging that Theatre Studies has been introduced recently in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s curriculum. Much earlier, the National Curriculum Framework 2005 had recommended theatre as one of the four major art forms at ‘all stages’, laying emphasis on interactive approaches rather than on instruction. But I find the rationale introduced by the CBSE quite strangely expressed. It goes like this, “All children play. Throughout the world in all cultures, children play. Throughout recorded history, children have played... In playing, children learn instinctively, they do not need a teacher.” The CBSE thereafter spells out the rigorous eligibility criteria for teachers aspiring to teach Theatre Studies in school. I suppose teachers are needed to draw out children’s ‘natural capabilities in playing’. Meanwhile, at Jadavpur University, Ananda Lal teaches theatre through an elective course named “Drama in practice”, which he has designed himself. Students who have opted for this course stage a play under his direction and are evaluated over the entire semester with literary analysis as part of the process. The fact that literature can form a component of other artistic products is made clear to all students of English through a compulsory first year core course named “Literature and the other arts”, which deals with cinema, theatre, graphic novels and songs.
I wish we had the freedom to design our own courses in school. We would definitely not teach plays with the sole purpose of preparing students for written examinations that require literary skills alone. Drama has to be enacted for a student to understand and appreciate it. As Lal writes in his article, even play reading in class “enables them to enter the characters and situations more easily, as well as capitalizes on young people’s innate abilities to imitate and act uninhibitedly. Instead of mimicking their faculty informally, their thespian talents are put to more constructive formal use!”
Sadly, we are always one of the first to possess certain advantages and end up being among the last to make use of them. Since ancient times we have had a complete system of detailed dramaturgy in Bharata’s Natya Shastra but we are yet to implement theatre in education effectively.
