The minority artists who get neglected

DEEPA GANESH
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/in-the-path-of-light/article5083393.ece 

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  Let there be lightPrasanna on his journey back to the roots; (left) a scene from the playPhoto: Murali Kumar K.Let there be lightPrasanna on his journey back to the roots; (left) a scene from the playPhoto: Murali Kumar K.
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Theatre Prasanna, with his new play Mecca Dari, takes a strong position against art that is driven by the intellect. He tells DEEPA GANESH that with diminishing space for hand-made art, it’s a lonely journey for the artisan

In 1984, for the first Festival of India in London, writer-director-activist Prasanna directed Tughlaq . His political forthrightness left the powers that be jittery and decided not to send the play for the festival. Theatre persons from various parts of the country decried the decision. Some even advised Prasanna to meet the concerned and present his case. “I will not make any clarifications to anyone,” Prasanna stood his ground.

During the Emergency, he returned to Karnataka from the National School of Drama and was instrumental in starting ‘Samudaya’ with like-minded thinkers and activists. This strong leftist theatre movement went to remote corners of Karnataka and through street theatre attacked authoritarianism. With his Abhivyakti Abhiyan, he went on Satyagraha, insisting that regional theatre be accorded the status of national theatre.

Prasanna could have easily been a conformist, but he chose not to be, right from the days when he dropped out of his doctoral programme at IIT, Kanpur. Critical of modernity, Prasanna has espoused Gandhian values and thought, and Charaka, a rural handloom women’s collective that he set up 15 years ago in the village of Heggodu is an outcome of his beliefs. Most production practices at Charaka are manual, and the sewing machine is perhaps among the few mechanical interventions here. Again, this is something that Gandhiji approved; he said: “it does not curtail human labour and human dignity.”

Prasanna, who has firmly voiced his faith in rural renewal, and believes that enterprises like Charaka are an antidote to government’s urban-centric policies, is also someone who exercises trust in the artisan who works with his hands. “I am drawn towards hand-driven artistes, and not art that is driven by the intellect,” says Prasanna, setting the stage for his latest theatre work based on Authol Fugard’s celebrated Road to Mecca . “I am disappointed with the way art is present in today’s world. It is so completely market driven and excessive. You find art on condom boxes also! Why are we doing art? Even when I taught theatre at NSD, I knew everyone was looking at Bombay… it’s pointless…,” he fades off.

Prasanna is angered by people who make a case for pure intellect. How can knowledge be separated from intellect? If art is not driven by experience then it is meaningless and dangerous, he argues. “In my early years, I was shaped by modernists. Over the years, I have come to doubt all that I believed then. It was a source of strength, but mistakes also happened.” The play is about a lonely widow, Helen, living in an African village. She finds meaning to her existence and loneliness by making sculptures, and this Prasanna says is also an expression of his loneliness and isolation as well. “I have distanced myself from this hyper active community,” he adds.

Helen makes bizarre-looking folk sculptures with recycled material. The curious thing about them is that they glow in darkness, creating an ethereal world for her. She believes that all her sculptures are on a caravan that is moving towards the east, in search of light. However, to others in the village, these sculptures are grotesque, anti-church and can only be works of someone on the edge of madness. She is abused by the villagers and Helen’s loneliness becomes unbearable. “It’s an important work for me at a personal level – both from the level of the feminist movement and as a work that helps my understanding of an artist. All her issues are handled at the rural level and has a lot of significance. After Maxim Gorky’s Mother I have not seen another woman character that’s so powerful. She is neither intellectually inclined to become a revolutionary, nor a feminist. Her work is her expression.”

This, for Prasanna, is a major contrast to the community of artists who are mere intellectual beings and are obsessive talkers. “They are landing in the cities in hordes. Helen stands alone amidst this chattering community of artistes. She at once becomes a mirror of the situation and in her tragedy is also our tragedy,” explains Prasanna who has been working on women-centric plays for a while now. “Women have interested me as partners in work over the last few years,” he adds. “In the past I could never talk freely to a woman. But the women of Charaka have showered me with so much warmth. They have fortified my conviction, and in a way redeemed me from many things that I was guilty about…,” says a visibly moved Prasanna.

“I have eliminated everything from my mode of theatre. Sets, props everything has been relegated to the background. Only actors matter to me.” Theatre’s a game of falsehood through which one has to move towards truth. Prasanna, through his theatrical practice, wants to help his actors find their route to truth – his as well.