On 29th January 2008, Prithvi theatre brought together select theatre personalities under the Prithvi-MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) partnership to dwell on the varied processes and possibilities of theatre training. The highlight of the event was the opening demonstration by Sabitri of Kalakshetra, Manipur. This petite woman of formidable talent and grace can easily be regarded as one of the greatest actresses of all times. Her demonstration was an example of the kind of training that their theatre company identifies with and which eventually translates into performance. The process was explained by her husband, Kanhaiyalal who is the artistic director of their company.

Having witnessed the company's productions earlier, I found Sabitri's demonstration to be a microcosm of the macro-production/s that have taken place or of those that are yet to take place. Here was a training ground that appeared to be inseparable from the show itself. As the initial exercises spiralled into a full-fleghed performance of sorts, it was evident that training for Sabitri or for the members of her company, does not exist in a vaccumn. It is a process that has to be thoroughly internalized because it is that which makes their theatre unique.

The dynamics of the demonstration aside, it raises crucial questions vis-a-vis the topic under consideration. In the first place theatre training across the world today has come to understand the efficacy of some basic aspects such as focus on breath (the centrifugal force in Sabitri and Kanhaiyalal's theatre) and movement. The importance of appropriate breathing techniques cannot be over-emphasized. Besides Sabitri and Kanhaiyalal's theatre while being successful in communicating their vision, is not a rare or isolated instance of an individual/company in India taking its training seriously. One can easily think of enough Institutions, big and small theatre companies and individuals that are concerned about training and of those that have perhaps also found approach/es, suitable to them.

In the ensuing discussion, which was largely spurred by Sabitri's demonstration, Sudhanva Deshpande and Moloyshree Hashmi of Jana Natya Manch (Janam) did speak of their own experiences with training as did Michael Ouellette of the Music & Arts Dept. at MIT. Later even Maya Rao from Delhi and Manju Kodagu and Srikanth NV from Ninasam in Heggodu, Karnataka brought in their own reflections. So on the one level it is evident that theatre practitioners are very much interested in the questions associated with training and in the processes of their fellow colleagues but on the other, with very few exceptions, there is the pressing problem of training not being able to function like an organic process. In fact this was one of the important points raised by Sudhanva, early in the discussion.

Again Theatre Training I believe is not only about mastering technique/s and specific skills. It is also about opening one's mind to newer possibilities of communication in terms of actual content, action and the allied resources that may be required to complete that communication. But it appears that we are either caught up with the same, old ways of thinking or we are at the dire risk of dishing out new ideas in a half-baked manner, which in their final outcome sink without leading to or building on something more substantial and lasting.

Theatre workshops, which advertise skills and techniques such as 'observation', 'voice projection and modulation', 'memory-recall' and other such grossly overused words, are dime a dozen. And yet today, it is only in rare cases in India that one gets to see a manifestation of all those sweet promises in the play itself. This to my mind is one of the fundamental issues concerning theatre training in our context.

On the one hand we seem to know exactly what is essential for a creative person in the theatre to practice and hone. But on the other there is hardly any work that can genuinely stake a claim for being innovative or of thinking out of the box or of simply getting its basics right. Theatre people are more or less practical enough to dispense with theories, high-sounding as they may be. They are aware that theories may help but cannot replace actual practice and that practice can come to have different connotations for different practitioners at different times.

But I guess what is required is to get a clear distillation of what a particular kind/s of theatre training means to a certain theatre person at the time s/he is involved with the process. This is understandably not easy since it requires several sessions with that theatre person but it is the only way in which one can begin to truly appreciate the finer points of a particular model or process. Again certain questions, which are imperative to a topic of this nature, need to be addressed with some rigour.

For instance do theatre people in India feel the need at all to reflect on the kind of theatre that is being done today as against what was done in the last century? Is training an institutional prerogative or at best an individual artiste's private domain? Is training on a larger scale, impossible to sustain in the absence of resources? Are our models of theatre training as eclectic or inter-disciplinary as they should be? Or more fundamentally, why do theatre people in India alike, bemoan the lack of discipline- a factor, integral to the training process? Do they really value the nature of training in whatever form it might take?

Speaking of training procedures and models it may be worthwhile for our practitioners to also collaborate with people from other fields such as primary education in which certain training models have been put to remarkable use. What is interesting is that some of these models are actually based on simple but very useful and effective theatre forms such as storytelling. Pratham, an NGO that has done substantial work in the field of primary education in India has for instance used a model based on storycards.

Its Rajasthan unit disturbed these cards as part of its 'Take Away' fluent reading teaching material for non-fluent readers of 8 to 12 years. The Pratham Rajasthan team mobilized cluster volunteers who in turn mobilized village volunteers across 4309 villages of the 4 districts of Ajmer, Dausa, Pali and Rajsamand. An ASER style randomized internal evaluation shows that 87% of the villages received the story cards and had volunteers there. Of those, 80% of children received at least one card.

Now before we conveniently dismiss this example as Applied Theatre we must pause to think that here is a great possibility of actually working out ways through which we can think of theatre moving out of traditional performance spaces and even the classroom itself. In some senses this is an extension of theatre training, which can benefit both the practitioner and the greater cause of education. The moot point is that theatre practitioners have to expose their training models to inputs from other specialists, who in their turn will gain from the practitioners.

One of the points that Sudhanva mentioned in the context of their own approach to training was about how their actors learn through the sheer number of shows that Janam performs. But Training can surely not merely substitute for the number of shows that a theatre person goes through. One can become more practiced in repetitions but can one actually become better or more creative? Younger and small theatre groups in cities like Mumbai don't even have the luxury to do enough number of shows on a sustained basis.

Sure there are barriers ranging from the lack of resources to infrastructure. Several theatre groups with the bare minimum resources are courageously plodding on but one has to move beyond these issues for a more deeper and perhaps scathing self-inquiry. If we are to ruminate more seriously on the issue of theatre training, our responses need to move beyond often-repeated clichés and generalizations. Oherwise we will have to content ourselves with individual experiences, which illuminating as they are, do not serve to address the problem at its core.



*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre & Performance Studies. Some of the inputs in this article are courtesy Ramu Ramanathan.