Playback Theatre- Live Performance -->From EXPERIENCE TO EXPRESSION !

 We live, we suffer, we try to understand life around us. Many times it is difficult to understand what state of mind we are going through. We don’t know how to relate to the world around. Language allows us to capture this incomprehensible reality. Paintings, music, sculptures, dance help us to group different essence of emotions of life. Movies and dramas expose us to parallel world of understanding where montage and mis-en-scene are woven in the spectrum of creative arts. Every one of these gives us a sense of reality which is diverse and multifaceted. We can never claim that every art performance can give perfect picture of pragmatic c world and stories of suffering around. Every form has its own uniqueness and special place in life. 

What if people who are living their own lives start expressing themselves? What if they exercise the right to reflect upon their own, with authentic-real stories they experienced, they lived. What if they adopt skills and practices of traditional performance to turn popular culture upside down? What if they define their reality themselves and redefine the ways in which it should be conveyed to entire world around? Welcome to the world of ‘Playback Theatre’. Theatre: By the people, for the people and to the people; of community and beyond.

Playback theatre is not about acting and following a script. It is in real sense, living a fraction of reality we appreciate in the form of different types of small performances. We do not know many times the lives people are living, stories people have to tell experiences they have to share, pain-agony they have to hide. In many ways, we have lost ability to converse with people who are living in different cultures, other geographies, separated boundaries, distant margins. We are so obsessed with ourselves that we even don’t recognize, acknowledge existence of OTHERs beyond our limited sphere. This theatre has grown to overcome complexities of our arrogance, privileged comfort and dead end in our curiosity which does not inspire us to engage with people we don’t care.

‘Playback Theatre’ subverts the aesthetics of traditional theatre and the way dialogue is started through cultural platforms about those people who have no say or no experience in exercising arts. Here audience becomes performers, storytellers become scriptwriters, people of community become supportive actors, traditional artifacts/utensil/weapons become instruments to produce beats for background music, place we gather becomes rehearsal place and ground on which we practice becomes a theatre stage. Margins get transformed into centre and centre is thrown away as if it has no relevance.

Stories construct history. They are blood lines of world today. Stories are agenda-manifestos of future we wish to arrive at. There cannot be single story about one crucial event let alone about communities, their contested histories, and their journey uptill now. Thus first understanding what kind of stories are travelling around us, becomes major task.

When we approach people for any development related work, it is necessary that we empower people to enable to express themselves. Ultimately they are custodian of their destiny, responsible for their progress-welfare and sensitive towards serious issues harassing their community. Development agencies, academic-research institutions, government funded departments, journalists engage in one way dialogue to understand problems of the suppressed. Mere transfer of monetary funds, and capacity building through skills and training is not enough. Communities feel strong need to connect themselves in a human way to the aspirations they are chasing. They constantly lack the ways to creatively express their anguish/anger about the condition they are forced to live in. Now, playback theatre has given them a powerful forum to reverse the agenda of development, discourses of public sphere and language through which people who are suffering get a chance to reshape it.  

Playback is spontaneous, natural, organic, transparent, honest heart to heart rendition of realities—troubled realities. It is not artificially scripted, it is not logistically mediated through boundaries of stage, it is not prisoner of languages, characters and movements during the performance. It is not inspired to translate fiction into a performance but it is driven with zeal to relive the experiences of people. It is real performance but reality depicted in it is not appropriate, compromised, understated, exaggerate or blown out of its essence. It is a capsule of metaphors by inhaling which we get a dense shock of life around to move us beyond the scale we would have been, even after we experience the same reality in world.

It works like this: People from community who want to fight for betterment of their lives gather. They share their stories, experiences within themselves. They develop courage among themselves to speak the truth, to memorize their personal-communal histories to learn to listen to each other, to enable each other to start talking.

Then at the place of performance, where community is a part of audience, real thrill is observed. There is one storyteller, one conductor and actors team coming from community. Conductor appeals the audiences (which can be mix of all kinds of people including community) to volunteer to share their stories by coming in front of the stage. These storytellers can tell any kind of stories on the range of happiness to sadness, relations to atrocity, compassion to aggression and gain-loss etc.

As storytellers start narrating, the actors listen in rapt attention. After successful narration of stories, conductor then splits entire story in five-six scenes and utters title of each scene one by one. As conductor utters title of scenes spontaneously, actors recount in their minds what exactly the quantum of time should be given to perform the scene. Then, without discussing anything amongst them with relaxed composure and totally immersed mental mode, they arrive on stage and start performing the scene the title of which was mentioned by conductor initially. All this happens within a span of one-two-three minutes maximum. That is where it is immensely challenging. It has no space for scripting, crafting, choreography, costumes, music composition and adding any production infrastructure. It has no time for reflecting back on the stories lived by storyteller. There is no scope for editing, adding, deleting what storyteller has told the audience. It has to be live, unaltered and authentic ‘PLAYBACK’ of the lives through which those stories are being navigated and reflected upon us. It allows for creativity but adapting story to dramatization is not allowed at all. It is tremendously theatrical, it is enormously real; it is not confluence of both.

Playback is performing a reality and not acting for it. It has potential to converge minds of conductor, storyteller, actors, audiences, communities in away none has imagined. It can be used to question the way in which people`s lives are shaped, developed or crushed. It gives powerful language of discourse through lively creative art and through which textual-real politic questions can be caricatured into body language, group sculptures, facial expressions, sequence of rhythmic movements, natural-artificial sounds/noise, body shadows, collective shapes through discrete body postures, illusion of real events through non-material stage, dislocating-displacing traditional roles through transferable genders, shifting characters and moving images across the array of performers of drama. 

Across the world, this form of drama is being used to raise the morale of communities to come out of oppression, arised out of sustained conditioning of their minds which leads to compromise their voices, arguments, memories, stories, experiences. Through an opportunity to perform a drama, they and we, together are getting an opportunity to understand the experiences of OTHERs. Stories connect to us powerfully to the emotions in those experiences. When unedited scripts enter on the stage through scene, we get live telecast of their histories. We get to understand their present in frames of our slowly undressing prejudices while they are sketching colors of events they faced, on our canvas of mind. Those colours and undressing constantly plays hide and seek, but what is significant to remember is that it is so real and natural; that we forget to distinguish—what is art and what is life; what is script and what is an event; what is act and what is performance; what is history and what is present…!!!

 (Permission needed to copy and circulate this--please write to creativityindian@gmail.com if required) 

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Scientific OBJECTIVITY in Subjective WAY !!!

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Objectivity and Subjectivity are always been subject of contentious debates. There is a saying, “We all are objective in our subjective ways.” When considered from point of view of ‘scientific method’, then this enquiry acquires many frames of analysis inspired from sociological, philosophical, hisotiographical perspectives. Feminist enquiry of growth of science and technology as a discipline and as a rigorous investigation approach for descriptive, inductive writings of Science Technology Society has been lately very much being discussed.   

The concepts of objectivity, truth, and the authority of empirical standards have come under serious challenge by some critics of the social sciences in the past several decades.  Feminist critics charge that the concepts and methods of the social sciences reflect an essential patriarchalism that discredits the objectivity of social science knowledge.  Marxist critics sometimes contend that the social sciences are enmeshed in a bourgeois worldview that makes objectivity impossible. And post-modernist writers seem to disdain the ideas of truth and objectivity in the social sciences altogether, preferring instead the slippery notions of multiple discourses and knowledge/power. (http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~delittle/POSITIV6.htm)

Feminist thoughts like any other critical perspective challenges hierarchy, patronizing attitudes and patriarchic mindset which is historically been not absent from science-technology enterprise. Before someone enters the arena to understand what feminist enquiry of academic writing in history, STS studies, social construction of S&T; it would be better to understand a) What is the structure of academia, b) Whose academia is it?, c) What are the relations between learned and people learning, d) Interfaces through which knowledge is shared, disseminated and appropriated. (Donna Haraway, Fox Keller, Erich Charles Conrad, Helen E. Longino, Peter K. Machamer, Gereon Wolters, Karen Cordrick Haely, Philip Kitcher, Georg G. Iggers)

Since the publication of first journal Philosophical Transactions in 17^th century, it took 300 years for Royal Society to admit women as its prestigious member. (On 22 March 1945, the first female Fellows were elected to the Royal Society. This followed a statutory amendment in 1944 that read "Nothing herein contained shall render women ineligible as candidates", and was contained in Chapter 1 of Statute 1.)

Androcentrism in Democracy and University is one of the most prominent threats to free thinking. Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of one's view of the world and its culture and history. Breaking the walls in access of opportunities for education remained the pivotal challenge ahead of women before the development of feminist critic of history of science and technology. However before going ahead with the conviction of feminist critic of all the history, understanding the definition of ‘women’ is very essential. Women may be a universal group of vulnerable people who are always fighting for their rights, their justice, socio-cultural and economical equality; but considering the vast array of diverse discriminatory practices in developing countries, the process of defining ‘Women’ becomes more and more contestable. We just have to remember that even though there are consistent efforts throughout the history to treat women as a cohesive group for gaining voting rights, fare wages, access to knowledge, political representation, employment; still the emergence of category of ‘universal women’ is far from realized. 

Every scholar, journalist, writer, politician, student, marketing person, business developer, artist is a ‘human body with a context.’ A recent essay published in EPW by Anirudh Deshpande describes the objectivity in history vis-à-vis other natural sciences. It says:

      

          “The postmodernists criticize history for being a subjective narrative imposed   on selected facts by historians through the use of linguistic devices. In the postmodernist submission, since all historical narratives are poetic acts performed by historians, it is impossible to access a verifiable objective past through the historian’s carefully constructed imaginary plot of events. Hence, and logically following the postmodern submission, all history is  subjective history, and therefore there is not much to choose between several carefully constructed interpretations of the past. If history is thus reduced to a project of cultural relativism and ideological subjectivism, it becomes easy to first denounce and later reject it altogether.”

The analysis, either through frame or through any other way, it is necessary to know who is the person arguing, writing and documenting is; from what belief system, vantage point they articulate their opinions. We have to be aware of contexts, situations, personal histories, ideological-professional biases, approach to knowledge creation, method of enquiry etc. 

History and biography both posit a dialectical relationship between life (as information) and art (as an expression of subjectivity). Both have a ‘truth’ claim and are represented as forms of narrative. If we were to recall some of the characteristic features of history, we would perhaps expect a coherent, continuous narrative, with objectivity and sufficient analysis, thereby enabling us to produce some ‘generalisable typicality’. Even a complex history should yield points of significance that would enable us to understand/interpret in its light events, movements, and large sections of time. (Recovery, Recontextualisation and Performance: Questions on the Margin by Rimli Bhattacharya; Biography as History, Indian Perspectives; Ed. Vijaya Ramaswamy, Yogesh Sharma, Orient Blackswan) 

In his more specialized collection in 2009, Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, Chris Mantzavinos offers this description of the field:

 “Philosophy of science examines "scientific knowledge." It tries to illuminate the specific characteristics of science, the way it is produced, the historical dimensions of science, and the normative criteria at play in appraising science…. The philosophy of the social sciences, on the other hand, traditional deals with such problems as the role of understanding (Verstehen) in apprehending social phenomena, the status of rational choice theory, the role of experiments in the social sciences, the logical status of game theory, as well as whether there are genuine laws of social phenomena or rather social mechanisms to be discovered, the historicity of the social processes, etc.”

 Producing, creating, constructing, shaping scientific facts depends on many attributes of scholarship and their history. Scientific objectivity depends on method of investigation—qualitative, quantitative—understanding of scientific method—grounding in sociological, humanities orientation—setting of arguments in ideological mesh—impact of tools used—influence of different technologies being deployed for finalizing the data collection or field visits etc. Scientific objectivity may be defined as rigorous fashion consistent with any particular philosophy of science. According to Popper, scientific objectivity consists of the freedom and responsibility of the researcher 1) To pose refutable hypothesis, 2) To test these hypothesis with relevant evidence, and 3) To state the results in an unambiguous fashion accessible to any interested person. (from ‘On Scientific Objectivity’ by Emery N. Castle)

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Faultlines at Food, Education and Health: From Raghuram Rajan to Harsh Mandar !

“The problems are rooted in indifferent nutrition, socialization and learning in early childhood, and in dysfunctional primary and secondary schools that leave too many Americans unprepared for change.”—Rajan

In above words, Raghuram Ragan, a Chicago School economist describes the reasons behind western, in a true sense, American subprime financial crisis, which caught up with throats of all economies of the world. His critic of financial system in contemporary times leading upto 2008 bubble bust originated in the farewell conference in honour of former Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan who famously admitted in Congressional hearings, ““This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of that year.”

Describing in detail the roots of hidden crisis, Rajan tells:

“I use the term education to refer to employability, but a better term is human capital, which refers to the broad set of capabilities, including health, knowledge and intelligence, attitude, social aptitude and empathy that makes a person a productive member of society.”  

In many ways, book of Harsh Mandar published recently gives overwhelming confirmation of what Rajan was saying all along. ‘Ash in the Belly: India’s Unfinished Battle Against Hunger’ makes sad reading of the fact which Mr. Mandar shares with us,   

“It is a profound irony that 200 million Indians should sleep on an empty stomach in the world's largest producer of milk and edible oils, and the second-largest grower of wheat and sugar. 

Arguing about the role of government which is inescapably crucial in eradicating hunger and resulting degeneration of social health, he says: “…One has to understand the paradox in India. The paradox is that countries which do not have the kind of capacities that our government has have actually done better than India in terms of reversing malnutrition and battling hunger.”

Conscience Keeper: Resigned from IAS in protest of riots in Gujarat

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Mandar exposes our lack of understanding about the social tension which cuts through this entire problem of food. This book opens the debate about the newly introduced ‘Right to Food’, its impact on Public Distribution System, on people’s health, nutrition and well-being. Mandar recently wrote an article about our community practices related to food which historically being inspired by empathy and compassion reflected in food distribution by the humanist and egalitarian Sufi Chisthi and Sikh traditions. He writes in his column Barefoot discussing other faiths also: “Christian missionaries care for the destitute, and Jain sects serve and feed the disabled. Islamic traditions require setting aside a regular fraction of one’s earnings to feed the hungry and destitute.” Mandar sadly argues that these community practices in recent times have been withering away by classification and segregation of receivers of the food according to their class, creed and affiliations.

Combination of nutritious food, degree of mental-physical growth of children, varying levels of children`s concentration and continuation in education, obstacles in learning and crippling of aspirations to aim high in life are well documented. Rajan in his book ‘Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy’ lists three main reason why burden of neglect towards development of children in early age can lead to not only collapse of society but also possible financial crisis, as US economy witnessed. He says,

“a) Quality of learning experience in schools is so poor that far too many students drop out before completing high school.

b) Even among those who graduate from high school, many are unprepared for the rigours of university education.

c) As the college premium increase, the cost of higher education also increases.”

To add emphasis on above three observations, Rajan says: “Despite attempts to expand financial aid, a quality education at a private university is passing beyond the reach of even middle class families. Learning does not take place in classroom. Differences in aptitude for education emerge in early childhood as a result of varying nutrition, learning environments, and behavioral expectations. ” Impact of all these leads towards ‘social insecurity’:

“As more and more citizens realize that they are simply not equipped to compete, and as they come to terms up with their own diminished expectations, the words economic freedom do not conjure open vistas of unlimited opportunity. Instead they offer a nightmare vision of great and continuing insecurity, and growing envy as the have nots increasingly become the have-nevers. Without some change in this trend, destructive class warfare is no longer impossible to contemplate.”

His NYTimes Piece "How did Economists got it so wrong?

Rajan describes in detail, by narrating the various economic, taxation, education, health policies to build the case that prevailing and increasing inequality in US society was responded with ambitious spur to the real estate and housing sector thus leading to the manufacturing of ‘debt sponsored derivative sky scrapers’ which created sub-prime crisis.

Success of Mid Day Meal scheme is beyond question. Spirit behind Right to Food Law is historic considering it took our country 65 years to recognize it as fundamental right. Any political correctness behind Conditional Cash Transfers is partially welcome subject to the limitations of its caveat to weaken public distribution system and submit ourselves to market dynamics, be it oil, gas or be it food. In closing speech of 100^th Science Congress held at Kolkata, where STI Polciy 2013 was unveiled by PM, noted policymaker M.S. Swaminathan argues:

“Since the new STI paradigm calls for attending to the needs of the people, it may be worthwhile reminding ourselves that our position today in various global indicators relating to human development and nutrition is the following:

--> National Family Health Survey [2005-06J Malnourished Children under 5--  above 40 %

            --> Low Birth Weight Children – 21 %

             --> Union Planning Commission (2072) - About 217 Million are undernourished

            --> Global Hunger Index (IFPRI, 2012) - 65th position among 79 countries

--> UNDP Human Development Report (2072) - 134th position among 187   countries

            --> Nutrition Barometer (Save the Children, 20L2) - Very Low position

Dr. Swaminathan emphasizes on redoubling our efforts in harnessing science for meeting the needs of our people in food and nutrition, water, sanitation, education, healthcare, shelter and energy. Urging for ensuring food security through home grown food from the historic sheep to mouth food, Swaminathan urged to change language of our aspirations in agriculture from green revolution to ever green revolution.

We are witnessing fervent debates about the possible ways of improving productivity in the agriculture, ways to improve storage quality in our mandis/godowns/containers across the country, ways to incentivize farmers to invest in biotechnology or moving away from it, ways to harness benefits from emerging-expanding domestic investment and upcoming FDI in retail sector, ways to fight against scarcity of irrigation against all odds like politicization of water share across districts, states and nations.

We are witnessing historic Right to Education legislation and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, upcoming Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), Integrated Child Development Programe, Teachers Training Progrmae discussed by 12^th Plan, rapid expansion in higher education through newly proposed number of institutions like Central Universities, IITs, IIMs, IIITs, NITs, IISERs, AIIMSs all in the emerging crucible of unified regulatory body of higher education and research by dissolving all regulatory bodies of higher education in India. Planning Commission working paper on Higher Education in 12^th plan notes following objectives on this front:

i)  Provide greater opportunities of access to higher education with equity to all  eligible persons and in particular to the vulnerable sections;

 ii) Expand access by supporting existing institutions, establishing new institutions, supporting State Governments and Non-Government Organizations/civil society to supplement public efforts aimed at removing regional or other imbalances that exist at present;

 iii) Initiate policies and programmes for strengthening research and innovations and encourage institutions – public or private – to engage in stretching the frontiers of knowledge;

 (iv) Skill development so as to reap the benefits of the demographic advantage

of the country;

 (v) Promote the quality of higher education by investing in infrastructure and

faculty, promoting academic reforms, improving governance and institutional

restructuring;

 (vi) Engage with civil society, state governments and with the international community in furtherance of knowledge, language and culture. Initiate policies and programmes for strengthening research and innovations and encourage institutions – public or private – to engage in stretching the frontiers of knowledge;

(iv) Skill development so as to reap the benefits of the demographic advantage of the

country;

 (v) Promote the quality of higher education by investing in infrastructure and faculty, promoting academic reforms, improving governance and institutional restructuring;

 (vi) Engage with civil society, state governments and with the international community in furtherance of knowledge, language and culture.

We are also witnessing starting of the debate related to Right to Health bill, proven success of ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists), success of immunization programs like Polio, failure on the front of Cancer, TB and other equally deadly diseases, progress on the front of NRHM, emerging National Urban Health Mission, debates about health insurance and many new initiatives in the health sector. Planning Commission paper on Health outlines four goals on this front:

a)    Universal access, and access to an adequate level, and access without excessive burden.

b)    Fair distribution of financial costs for access and fair distribution of burden in rationing care and capacity and a constant search for improvement to a more just system.

c)    Training providers for competence empathy and accountability, pursuit of quality care and cost effective use of the results of relevant research.

d)   Special attention to vulnerable groups such as children, women, disabled

You can't postpone social development forever: Rajan in recent interview

In a way, if we try to understand the dynamics of Human Capital i.e. Health, Education, Food, Employability etc. number of institutional, policy, legal initiatives have been taken in recent five years. In the context of economic policies we want to implement, (if we have any), the success of all those policies will indisputably and unequivocally depend on germination of all the initiatives mentioned in the above lines i.e. food, agriculture, health, education, ways of distribution, legal enforcements of rights along with innovation thriving on free expression, experiment and collaboration across marriages of social, economic and political resources, imagination and convictions.

Our life is truly at the crossroads and cross-connections of faultiness. The intersecting nodal points carry enormous potential to empower us as we are living in the world powered by science-technology, mobility, internet, whirlwind of democratic movements across the world, debates about equality, freedom of expression and human development index. Thus exposing the possibilities of weak and strong tectonic plates in the 21^st century Indian society will enable us to simulate the ways in which we can cement those faultiness with social, political and economic initiatives having sustainable—constructive impact. 

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