Obscenity in Modern Indian Theater

The play's promotional campaign reads, "Persons under 18 years old will not be admitted." It opens to a curious audience, who see audiovisual images so similar to TV and movies, yet very different. Looking at the similar images on stage, and that too adds a 3D perspective to the audiences. Nevertheless, they are disturbed and find it difficult to believe their eyes and ears. This is common with this genre of plays, which are purely for adult audiences due to the content.

But this is true with most of this type of plays, which are being staged worldwide. There has been a separate category created for such kind of plays called In-Your-Face Theatre. There are many different levels of such plays and it was started with the specific intention of having a parallel theatre forum to communicate to the audience.

We can trace the history of this type of performances to Avant-garde theatre. This French movement gained prominence in the modern period, a period that could be loosely described as the late 20th century. Furthermore, the term Avant-garde is a military metaphor, which literally means, advance guard. It can be interpreted in a revolutionary sense too, resisting an overpowering state. More specifically, the Avant-garde movement consisted of artists in an embryonic state, and most often represented themselves as being alienated from the established order because they challenged the norms and values held by that established order at that time. From its inception to the current time, it has changed, evolved and been accused as being a marketing tool for these productions.

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The international trend setter, Michael John Garces, has the capacity to stage even day to day today events or a TV show to turn static on stage. A young girl lies motionless on a bed showing no sign of life. A man in a suit enters a dark kitchen, and without turning on a light, he loosens his tie, and opens a refrigerator, to become suspenseful and disturbing. His productions at the Juggerknot Theatre Company are widely acclaimed to stage "In-Your-Face" productions.

Recently in Bangalore, a play called "Filth," directed by Preetam Kolipillai, was staged. This was also tagged as an adult play written by Irvine Welsh and adapted by Harry Gibson. The books of Welsh and Gibson's adaptations are well known in the world and the productions highly acclaimed. The Gibson play "Trainspotting" even saw 23 different line-ups for the four actors. Not only physically demanding for the artists, these plays are hard to digest for audience too. The sheer complexity of the dialog and number of characters are difficult to keep straight for the audience.

Gibsons previous production, "Nightmares," was a grand success, and he was commenting on his next production, "Trainspotting," around the country. In one of his online interviews, he said, "It's filthy expensive because it's an epic panto from hell. I might do a small version of it in which a small group of naked people savage each other in a cage. I'm completely serious about that. I'm very into sensationalism, I'm a shocking sensationalist." With such quotes, the production has already has achieved the necessary publicity ensuring its success. I just hope this is not continued here in India. Yes, if this is staged in India, the stage where it will be enacted would eat lots of stones and eggs since these are not yet welcome with both open arms and we are quite conservative when it comes to new ideas."

Director Preetam feels these productions are grittier than typical theatre. This represents the logical movement of changed time. When talking about "Filth", he added that the harsh realities, which get the usual reaction of "what the hell" or "this is not theatre," are the typical urban middle class phenomenon. He said he would have loved to Indianize the script, but there was not only adequate time but with the script there were instances where there could not have been absolute equivalences to Indian society.

Strangely enough, Preetam did not get a single bad remark. Strangely enough, the comments were restricted to "good execution and disturbing." One good development observed is the wide spread acceptance by the younger generation.

Talking about this trend of adult's only plays, Ranjon Ghoshal had a different opinion. He is another big name in Theater in India. He contends, if it's a tool used to market or sell the play, its not good for the theatre culture. But if it's necessary to the plot, then he doesn't have any objections. He also mentioned the Bengali theatre, where such explicit performances are a necessary component of the script, and used moderately. He added, "People still go and watch positive theatre and I wouldn't do such explicit theatre myself."

Prakash Babu, noted cartoonist and theatre activist shares Ranjon's idea of the need of vulgar performances should be script based. But he added that the productions, which are being staged, recently have all been text based. Unless the visual based theatre makes a huge comeback, then its difficult to keep all ages of audiences entertained and inside the theatre. He added, "If script supports nudity its welcome, like the 50 year old nude woman in a Kanhyalal production, which was staged at the Akka festival in Mysore and was never obscene or offending or even disturbing."

These conversations are never ending and they are typical of any production. Again, the fight is between two schools of thought: one supporting the idea and the other against. The best way to define the need is the audience. If theatre is being promoted in any way whether by hook or crook, I support the idea and stand by the same. But the last line would be to get people back into theaters from their coutches and movie theaters!

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