The creative expressions of protest theatre take on many forms, but remain true to their fundamental premise of raising a voice
The troupe members of UR/Unreserved travel across the country to bring forth issues that affect the hinterland
Courtesy: UR/Unreserved
Protest theatre has existed for ages, in myriad forms, seeking to overcome social ills and bring about change through performance. The protest theatre of the 1940s, for instance, played an important role in India’s struggle for independence. It is always interesting to observe how each new zeitgeist heralds its own cycle of protest theatre, with old methods of resistance and agitation giving way to new forms of engagement, even as traces of historic struggles linger in each wave of politically-charged creative expression.
This year, on Gandhi Jayanti, under a banyan tree in Bengaluru’s historic Cubbon Park, a green expanse of 300 acres that is often dubbed the “lungs” of the city, a unique theatre initiative was flagged off for an epic pan-Indian journey. In the wee hours of the following day, 14 troupers boarded the New Tinsukia-Bengaluru Weekly Express to begin the first leg of UR/Unreserved, a collaboration between locally based Maraa Collective, a media and arts organisation, and 44-year-old project director Anish Victor. “We will be ready to work as soon as the people start waking up,” said Anish purposefully, as his team embarked on an expedition that would take them along hand-picked arteries of the Indian Railways, India’s veritable nervous system.
Eight members of his team, or the performer-facilitators, would try to map out notions of identity, both personal and communal, by interacting with passengers and train personnel on a ‘performative’ journey with clearly defined rules of engagement. They would be accompanied by assorted crew members, a visual artiste and Anish himself. The circuitous route would take them to locations as far-flung as Dhemaji in Assam, Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir, and Irinjalakuda in Kerala, all nodal points near the country’s extremities, identified as venues for ‘Platform 1’ events. These events—performance pieces, songs, installations or films—would be a sharing of findings from each concluded leg of the train journey.
Theatre practitioners, ensconced in their echo chambers, are often alienated from the issues that beset the great amorphous hinterland. UR/Unreserved’s desire to reach out to a large and diverse cross-section of people—an estimated 10,000 people in 30 days—and return with a patchwork quilt of identity and belonging almost smacks of naïve idealism, but there are deep reserves of conviction that fuels it. An excerpt from the project’s press release indicates the kind of stories that inspire it: Referring to the 2012 exodus of North-Easterners from Bengaluru, it says, “The images and stories of women, children and men fleeing in thousands on trains, with their hurriedly gathered belongings, was the starting point for the idea of UR/Unreserved”.
“ The images and stories of women and kids fleeing in thousands on trains was the starting point.
(This story appears in the 22 December, 2017 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)