E-Kantipur

The worD theatre comes from the Greeks. It means ‘the seeing place’. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation,” Stella Adler acting teacher and theatre practitioner once said. Theatre is a medium unlike any other. It is performed in front of a live audience, and each performance is inevitably different.

Theatre can happen in a huge amphitheatre or can occur on a piece of dirt in the middle of a field. It can happen spontaneously, or it can be planned and rehearsed for years. Theatre can be used to teach, to entertain, to explain, to express, to develop and to empower. It can include men, women, black, white, young, old and any other variety of people that you can imagine. Theatre is honest; it expresses our own personal truths and our social situations.

The social circumstances in which each culture and era have found itself can be explained through the theatre of the time. We had Ancient Greek tragedy delving deeply into mythological stories and Greek comedies satirising the political situation between Athens and Sparta. The Greeks cried and laughed, all at their own social situation. At any given time in our history, we have had theatre. Robert Edmond Jones, the writer of the seminal theatre text The Dramatic Imagination says “Life moves and changes and the theatre moves and changes with it.” This fits with Stella Adler’s quote: “While our life changes, the theatre changes and tells different aspects of our truth. Inevitably while our life and culture changes, so does the way we express it. So does theatre.”

Having been lucky enough and driven enough, I have witnessed and participated in magnificent and life-changing theatre. From the halls of my 1,200-seat, 100-year-old high school auditorium to the cramped black box salon theatres Off-Broadway to prison classrooms, I have seen my personal truth expressed on a stage. Theatre is a raw medium used to show people the ugly side of life as well as the beautiful—and its immediacy can be threatening and empowering. From the glorious desperation with which I wrote my first play, I have been honest and delved deeply through the skeletons that rattled in my closet. I wanted the world to see how I personally viewed our social situation. For what is art, but not an individual’s opinion on how they see the world? Theatre provides an opportunity for everyone to have a voice, an opinion and a right answer.

I attended several theatrical performances at the Kathmandu Theatre Festival in Gurukul a couple months ago and was pleased and astonished that works of such caliber and variety came to Nepal. As someone who has done theatre in New York and other parts of the world, I was in awe of the size and diversity of the audience. If these types of plays were to be produced in New York, every performance would not have been sold out. Additionally, there would not have been such diversity in age, ethnicity, class, gender and educational background among the audience members. I was happy to see that as many people as possible were squashed onto the benches and on the floor in front of the stage. The viewers disregarded the uncomfortable seating arrangement because of what they had come to see. In every performance I saw a different facet of the human situation revealed. Whether it be in a prison in South America or in a anonymous living room or in an alternate reality in Norway via India—I witnessed commentary on the human condition. And the audience was there taking in every word, every breath, every silence.

Theatre has the power to change us, to transform us and to make us aware of other perspectives in life. During this theatre festival, I spoke to people that had never seen a play before. There were people with babies, foreigners, teenagers, elderly people and more.

Nepalis, Americans, Spaniards, French, Dutch and the list continues. We came together to watch a piece of theatre from the perspective of someone who was not ourselves. We heard the personal truths of others, we learned about the human condition while standing in someone else’s shoes. We were entertained, we were empowered, we learned, we laughed, we cried—all in the name of theatre, and all in the name of theatre here in Nepal. To me, that is a gift.

Robert Jones says that “[i]n the theatre, as in life, we try first of all to free ourselves, as far as we can, from our own limitations.” And in the theatre, we are all free. We are free to think how we want, act how we want and be who we want. The space and acceptance of a theatre provides this to us. Theatre’s power lies in that freedom, in its own willingness to let go of  limitations and to celebrate what liberty means. Theatre allows our personal truths to be spoken: it allows us the audience, us the playwrights, us the directors, us the actors, us the people of Nepal or anywhere to relate to someone else. Theatre gives us freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of being and the freedom to tell and see the truth. To me, that is the greatest gift I could ever receive.

Post Your Comment

Please note that all the fields marked * are mandatory.
* Full Name
* Address
* Email Address
* Comment
* Captcha	Get another CAPTCHA code
Note:	Comments containing abusive words or slander shall not be published.