cultural hegemonies (whatever they are)
I've just been re-reading an internet article, written in 2004, that I read last year, and which really got me interested in pursuing this research into the international programme. The full thing can be read here:
http://www.writernet.co.uk/php2/news.php?id=327&item=172
But here are 2 quotes which pretty much sum up what this writer thinks:
"I recently went to a performance given as part of this year’s season of work from the Royal Court’s International Programme.... it occurred to me when watching this piece of work, how very similar it was in style to the work that I am familiar with from British writers at the Court. This led me to wonder whether the Court is imposing its own aesthetic on these international works. Are these plays just turned into homogenised Court products that follow that theatre’s house style?"
"The Royal Court has a style of writing plays and wherever there’s a workshop they will feed that British style in. We can’t tell how much this is influencing the work of the playwright, but many of the international plays that have been given full productions follow the social realist tradition of the classic Royal Court Play. Most of these plays ask liberal humanist questions about the state of people and the world in which we live".
I've also been reading a book by someone called Nemichandra Jain: Indian Theatre: Tradition, Continuity and Change. He talks about this issue too, via comparisons with traditional Indian theatre -- he says the purpose of drama in India traditionally was to create a feeling of pleasure or bliss (Rasa) whereas the purpose of Western drama was to reveal struggles of life/conflict. Basically of course he is saying that recent (well, 1992 the book came out) Indian drama has been Westernised.
I am just thinking about all this. I kind of know what I think, but I'd love to hear what any of you think. Are you being imposed upon? Seems to me this is all quite an interesting political/post-colonial argument -- even writing in English in India is a political act of sorts, isn't it?
H
http://www.writernet.co.uk/php2/news.php?id=327&item=172
But here are 2 quotes which pretty much sum up what this writer thinks:
"I recently went to a performance given as part of this year’s season of work from the Royal Court’s International Programme.... it occurred to me when watching this piece of work, how very similar it was in style to the work that I am familiar with from British writers at the Court. This led me to wonder whether the Court is imposing its own aesthetic on these international works. Are these plays just turned into homogenised Court products that follow that theatre’s house style?"
"The Royal Court has a style of writing plays and wherever there’s a workshop they will feed that British style in. We can’t tell how much this is influencing the work of the playwright, but many of the international plays that have been given full productions follow the social realist tradition of the classic Royal Court Play. Most of these plays ask liberal humanist questions about the state of people and the world in which we live".
I've also been reading a book by someone called Nemichandra Jain: Indian Theatre: Tradition, Continuity and Change. He talks about this issue too, via comparisons with traditional Indian theatre -- he says the purpose of drama in India traditionally was to create a feeling of pleasure or bliss (Rasa) whereas the purpose of Western drama was to reveal struggles of life/conflict. Basically of course he is saying that recent (well, 1992 the book came out) Indian drama has been Westernised.
I am just thinking about all this. I kind of know what I think, but I'd love to hear what any of you think. Are you being imposed upon? Seems to me this is all quite an interesting political/post-colonial argument -- even writing in English in India is a political act of sorts, isn't it?
H
posted by harriet at 6:06 pm
6 Comments:
Dear Harriet, this post-colonial argument has been flogged to death by all sorta academics. i don't buy it anymore because it is not relevant to me as a writer. And on Mr. Jain's claim that "the purpose of drama in India traditionally was to create a feeling of pleasure or bliss (Rasa)" well, I have found that many books on indian theatre are founded on myopic observations, catering to mainstream indian theatre. the sweeping definition of 'traditional indian theatre' needs to be critically examined.
And the question of being 'imposed', well, i can't say much about what royal court does or does not on a larger scale but speaking from personal experience, i just have to quote carl on this. he told me very earnestly that for my play, if i feel that the methodology that he has imparted is useful for it, then use it. but if it is not working, then just dig inside myself boldly and find/use what works best for me.
i write in english because i can twist the language in whichever way i want. that doesn't make me british or american or an indian with colonial hangover. its my creative right, not a fault or disservice to indian tradition or lineage. tomorrow if i decide that i can twist yoruba better than english, then i will write in yoruba.
Well Harriet, that's a can of worms you're opening!
I first trained with the Royal Court in 2001 in Bangalore. Listening to what Elyse, Dominic and April had to say was absolutely mind expanding. To be honest, at eighteen a lot of what was said was not fully grasped, but I snapped it all up nevertheless.
At a point in the workshop Mahesh Dattani was invited as a guest speaker, to talk to us about his work. Sadly, the conversation immediately nose dived into raucous academic discussion on writing in English as being post-colonial and in a sense – 'writing back to the empire.' I sat baffled, through the entire hour.
At another point in the workshop Chandrashekar Kambar was invited to talk to us. He arrived with a fairly straightforward notion. You are Indian writers, these are British faculty. Learn what you will from them, but kindly start writing in your mother tongue.
(He was coming from the 'liberalisation and globalisation are taking a heavy toll on the rich culture and literature of the country' angle.)
There was no scope for any dialogue, simply because in about five minutes he had junked about ten days of work done at the workshop. And completely collapsed the 'ridiculous' possibility of 'authentic writing' in an 'alien' language. And in effect denied my existence and efficacy as a writer.
After the workshop I realized that I strongly disagreed with both these views. I write, think and speak in English. And I write about the reality I see around me, for the people around me. Unapologetically and unequivocally.
I strongly reject the 'writing back to the empire' tag as being a complete misnomer. I'm writing for the Indian stage with stories relevant to modern India.(with all its paradoxes) The fact that I am writing in English is not to be muddled with the notion that I might be writing for a British stage. And alternatively, the fact that I am not writing for a British stage, does not mean I'm not writing for an international audience.
(I am also aware that certain stories will not tolerate some aspects of the mechanics of western dramaturgy … but more on this later, after I actually pull off a successful play that can validate this. And I'll be watching the Marathi writers closely on this one!)
I also strongly reject the jingoistic and retrogressive view that unless you are writing in a 'real' Indian language you cannot tell 'authentic' stories. I write in the English that I hear and I find my story telling no less authentic for that fact. To take on 'liberalisation and globalisation' in your work is a shade better than pretending they don't exist. You may just collapse within the paradox of taking it on in the first place – e.g. the brutal language of industrialized racism necessitates brutal language for adequate depiction – therefore the language of my play must be offensive and brutal – therefore it is essentially a western and liberalised play because of its offensive language! But at least this way you are reacting to the pressures on our culture and circumstances and not running for cover to hide behind mythology or song 'n dance!
And with all this strong rejection, I equally strongly believe in 'inclusion' – an aesthetic that doesn't clinically deny its own tradition, culture and history. Nor frog-in-well like deny the pressures that affect the modern aesthetic – nostalgically trying to exhume classical sensibilities. In a sense I favour the 'hybrid'. More on this, in a brilliant article which I re-read now and then and have mentioned earlier –
http://www.adishaktitheatrearts.org/theatre_research.htm
You don't spit at knowledge or opportunity. You receive it and make it work for you as best as you can. Sometimes the knowledge is useful, sometimes its counterproductive. The workshop equipped me with incredibly useful skills and tools. But my writing will not necessarily be contained by those same tools. The Royal Court has a style, plays that come out of international workshops will definitely carry that signature feel in some way. I don't feel imposed upon, I love the collaboration! But I'm also aware that I am in control of my aesthetic, my personal dramaturgy, my 'voice' and I'll do as best as I can.
'Indian writing in English' as the latest label goes, seems to have found particular favour in the Indian novel, but playwriting remains without champions. I would like to believe that when this phenomenon is discussed a decade from now – playwrights will appear.
Any way this is a long long discussion… More on this in August…
Love
Ram
Wonderful stuff you guys. This is just what I hoped would happen. Any more comments would be really welcome. I am delighted to have opened a can of worms and look forward to more of them wriggling out here or verbally later.I have taught po-co quite a lot and can see what they all are on about but it is refreshing to hear your strong confident voices putting your sides of the argument. Much love to y'all.
*Takes bow. Grins. Puts on brass knuckles.*
By equipping writers with a particular set of skills, you automatically being to exert a degree of control over the contours of the eventual output.
Couple that with a director who uses the same approach and the piece is doomed to 'standard format'.
Any writer who is mildly self-aware will begin to adapt the received skills to suit his own dramaturgy. The more pragmatic writers :-) just dump the technique after assimilation and let it work sub-consciously, if at all.
When you dangle the carrot of an international production in front of a writer - the real trouble begins.
The 'influence' then begins to distort sensibilty and the urge to 'tailor make' the play kicks in. The 'inherent aesthetics' of the writing becomes subservient to the 'prescribed format'. End product - a standard format play that has no 'original' flavour or texture. If I am to use an adjective from my metalhead days - the writer has 'soldout'.
Jeeves - I don't think it's genre in question here, it's the aesthetic itself.
Also 500 years from now my decomposed skeletal remains and Maia reincarnated as a vulture will kick the shit out of you and your descendants if 'Crab' or 'Proof of Love' are ever deemed 'traditional indian theatre.'
And before I start using words like 'cultural imperialism' I'm going to get down to some 'real writing'! Someone shoot me if I post here again.
Me also want to put in two bits pliz.
I'm a rank amateur in play-writing, and my only experience in that area has been to work through improvisations and jot down what comes out of them. For me, that was as real as things could be. Because then what you got was a collective outpouring of content and emotion, action that happens because it does and not because you want it to happen, and a story that is as honest and rich in possibility as it is perhaps possible (for me) to imagine.
What this workshop did to me was to make me think in a completely different way. Now, for the first time, I'm having to picture scenes in my head (agree with you Maia, it's bloody difficult) and everytime I write half a scene I think bull, who speaks like that? None of the action makes sense and I seriously wonder every two days whether it's a story that will engage anyone at all. I must confess that all of Carl's emphasis on 'action' made me stutter and stumble quite a bit to begin with.
I haven't regained all of my fluency and confidence yet, but I must tell you that I did a decent re-write of my first play, 'Wave', in time for the rehearsals to begin. And now, suddenly, a lot of things which made me curse Carl through April (boy, he must have had hiccups!) are working in my favour. Doesn't mean my play's first draft is done. Nope. But I'm hoping another week should do it.
Has it changed the way I write, or compromised my honesty as a writer in any way? No. What it has done, though, is given me some amount of freedom from that accursed tendency to write, as you put it Maia, a 'talkie'. I find myself able to restrict myself from saying too much (while constantly seeking reassurance from Anu that it is making sense!). At the same time, I wouldn't say my play is turning out to be remotely 'European' in any way---not in style and certainly not in sensibility.
I'm writing a play set in India and about Indian people and yes, with strong, emotionally charged scenes. It's what I understand about my milieu, about 'rasa', that everyone has discussed here. There are, of course, nine 'rasas', and only one of them is bliss. I see the term 'rasa' as a theme describing intensity of emotion, of which there can be nine types. So you need not go away from a play feeling blissful, although traditional Indian theatre does demand that the sense of a whole, of completion, is achieved.
But we are not pure-breds from the school of 'traditional theatre' who are being forced to swallow a different perspective. Not at all. Our world is too disturbed, broken into too many pieces, far too kaleidoscopic for us to be satisfied with completion, with wholeness. We are exposed to the world (sometimes to too much of it) and we soak in everything like sponges. What a workshop like Carl and Phyllida's does is to help us focus on what of all the various stories and styles we have ingested and formed should make our play. It helped me work out what was worrying me the most and to start writing it just to get it out of my system.
I'm a bit like Prufrock in the sense that I often seriously wonder what I mean. And tools like the ones Carl gave us during the workshop help me narrow down the possibilities. Which is brilliant.
Yes -- thanks Manji and Maia and anyone else I haven't thanked. This has been so useful for me. One thing I have realised is that there are few books, if any, about contemporary Indian drama. Or maybe there are, but I have not found any yet via Amazon or the British Library. I wish we could all sit together and continue this discussion verbally, but perhaps we will get a chance to do this at some stage. I still have many questions and thoughts on it all which are sort of half digested and need thrashing out.
BTW Maia I was interested in what you said about RCT plays. I haven't even read or seen all the ones I sent, though I know the better known ones. The two you picked as ones you liked, McPherson and McDonagh, are both Irish writers, of course, and are indeed particular favorites of mine. McPherson is the writers' writer these days -- when I asked all my interviewees who they admired, he was the one they named. Sarah Kane -- well, I can see why anyone would be upset and horrified by her work. But she has humanity, and that is what redeems her for me.
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