The stage is set. The actor takes his place and is handed a large envelope. It is a sealed copy of the script that he will read–for the first time ever–in front of a live audience. Yes, the actor has come on stage without knowing his script, part or role. It is also the last time he can perform it. That's how the censored Iranian writer, Nassim Soleimanpour, has conceived the play, White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Also, a reviewer or a critic is not allowed to give away any part of the narrative in the review, making it one of the best kept secrets. If you have seen the work once, you can still watch it several times to experience how different actors bring their interpretation and individuality to it.
The setting is an old warehouse in Dhan Mill Compound in Chhatarpur, Delhi. White brick walls, high ceiling, muted colours, warm lighting, thick curtains dividing the performance space and a meet-and-mingle area that houses a small cafe–marked Oddbird Theatre. Not 'shiny' but new. This informal space for the performing arts, opened in 2016, staged the global sensation, an edgy, experimental work by 35-year-old Soleimanpour, in November. The play was brought to India by Quasar Padamsee's group, QTP, in August 2016 and has been performed by Arundhati Nag and Anurag Kashyap, among others.
Since its global debut in 2011, the play has been staged in 15 languages around the world, including Hindi and Marathi. The script has an existentialist theme, even absurdist as some may feel, with several twists. The latest performances were by two noted practitioners: Sudhanva Deshpande in English and Danish Husain in Hindi. Nuances come through language too.
“After I performed, I saw three other actors do it,” says Deshpande, about the work, wherein the script calls for some audience members to participate too. “The fascinating part was to see how much of the actor's personality and predilections became part of the play. Each performance felt different—partly because each time it was performed by a different actor and partly due to new audience each time, who brought their own energy,” he says.
The play belongs to the emerging genre of immersive theatre, which is gaining popularity both in India and abroad. This experiential form allows the viewer to go beyond his role as just a spectator and participate in some way or form in the narrative.
At the recent Serendipity Arts Festival, held in Goa, a corner at one of the venues was covered in a black curtain and was marked as the space for Memory Recipe, a 15-minute show that combined theatre, smell and memory. Off and on, the Bangalore-based theatre-maker Aruna Ganesh Ram asked viewers in groups of four or more to step inside the darkened room for the experience which included 'smell, smoke and loud sounds' with illuminated images of food. The work is at the intersection of food and theatre, engaging the viewer's senses directly. Food smells were sprayed from various bottles on the viewer's hands, akin to getting your hands 'dirty' in the kitchen, as the performer enacted a script set to music and sounds of kitchen and cooking. At the end, the participants were asked to sniff different threads in a masala box and guess the spice. This part evoked personal memories for each person, compelling them to think about food and its various smells in different ways.
“To immerse is to put the audience into the space of action,” explains Ram. “You become part of the performance. There are no boundaries. The performance happens only because you are there.” It lends more power to the audience. To experience means to engage all senses. Not just see and hear, but smell, taste and feel in a theatre. With every new performance, the aim is to push the boundaries of immersive craft, she says. “To immerse an audience is to offer them choice, in other words, agency. They have the power to shape the performance.”
Creative power: Memory Recipe, a 15-minute show that combines theatre, smell and memory.
While this is a new line of work in India, aspects of immersion have been there in art forms all along. Cave paintings are experienced through touch, not just sight. Street theatre makes one understand concepts of space and audience interaction. Traditional games help to see participation playing out where larger than life game boards were set up and people played as pawns within those structures. “Think of the Ramlila of Ramnagar, where the audience is so central to the performance, and the locales keep shifting,” says Deshpande. This is all coming into immersive theatre today.
Ritual storytelling or community rites involving shamanistic roles are among the earliest forms of immersive theatre practiced globally. Decades ago, directors as diverse as Augusto Boal from Brazil of the Forum Theatre/Theatre of the Oppressed fame, and Polish theorist Jerzy Grotowski of the Towards a Poor Theatre fame based training programmes around this experience. In 2000, the Rimini Protokoll group from Germany emerged at the forefront of the 'formal experience as theatre' movement.
“The more recent urban trends have caught on in the last 8-12 years,” says Divya Kumar Bhatia, artistic director of the annual Aadyam theatre festival. In London and New York, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a staging of Macbeth, is often cited as having triggered the current wave of immersive theatre. “In India, particularly in Delhi, there has been a growth in the form in the last decade. We are also keen to explore this genre in the coming time,” he says, counting Zuleikha Chaudhari's Auditioning the Plaintiff (Kumar Ramendra Narayan Roy) Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case shown at the Kochi Biennale 2016 as one of the recent works in this genre.
Immersive theatre also draws from film, puppetry, martial arts and fine arts. “Globally, this trend is gaining popularity,” says Ram, who found her inspiration in the early 2000s works of UK's Punchdrunk. “They started by creating pieces in kitchens, garages and inside bedrooms. Shunt, Gob Squad, Lundahl & Seitl and Nimble Fish are others in this space. These were starting points for immersive work and have inspired many artists, including me,” she says.
In India, besides Ram, Delhi-based Amitesh Grover, Thrissur-based Deepan Sivaraman, and companies like Crow and Accelerated Intimacy are doing immersive work. Grover works with ideas of everyday and turns them into performances. For instance, he used the Performapedia format, performance as a mode for knowing, to explore sleep. From the sleep mafia of Delhi to the most expensive mattress-maker in Germany, he examined the layers that define this seemingly mundane daily ritual by inviting people to share sleep time with each other.
“Immersive theatre in India has come up in the last three years,” says Grover. “The idea is to challenge the audience and betray their expectations, where you can explore collective self-reflection,” he says.
There are more flexible spaces now in India, where work of this nature can be made. “The beauty is that it can be located anywhere. Indian audiences are also warming up. Given that we are so used to being passive spectators, there is initial inhibition while engaging, but then the nature of the work eases them in,” says Ram.
Traditional theatre is associated with rehearsals and blacking out of the audience visually. What's the rigour for the immersive that incorporates spontaneity? “We have to rehearse for the unpredictable, work within structures and then the unknown moments can happen during the show. The ability to make it part of the performance requires practice,” says Ram. In her gender-based work Coloured and Choosing, one person from the audience performs at a time. The blindfolded participant chooses what they experience or in Knock, Knock, Who's There, a piece on self-discovery, the audience express themselves as part of the performance. Flexible and open studio spaces, intimacy as opposed to scale, and adapting spaces to suit concepts mark out this genre. [In August 2014, THE WEEK had reported on the opening up of unconventional spaces for intimate and informal performances.]
Crow founders, Mumbai-based Nayantara Kotian and Prashant Prakash, are among the new crop to follow. “At least in India it feels like a large, indefinitely-charted playground where we are making the rules as we go along,” they say. Kotian attributes the immersive trend to gaming, surplus of choice in entertainment and desire for increased agency in consumption of art. “Also perhaps from a yearning for the visceral experience in an increasingly technological world...” she says.
Deshpande offers a pragmatic take. “In the major cities in the West, it has become hard to attract audiences and build a long-term commitment to your work. So theatre companies tend to occupy niches, offer something distinct, apart from the fact that many want to experiment with the form itself,” he says.
There is tremendous scope for immersive theatre to become edgy. Deshpande recalls an experience from the early 2000s that would begin with an actor asking an audience member to volunteer a shoe to be used in the performance. The actor would then start auctioning it. It would start as a joke and end up being a serious act. “In a word, it was about everything that capitalism is, but without giving it that name. This is from before the term immersive theatre came into general parlance,” says Deshpande.
Bhatia feels the edginess depends on the audience's threshold. “Abroad, I have slept overnight in a show, have had a nude performer sit on my lap and even been in a 45-minute piece where it rained right through,” he says.
Grover feels truly immersive theatre borders on the dangerous and risky. “I once did a 48-hour performance in Germany where we set up a mini-capitalist city inside a building. We used fake currency where people could buy and sell things. I played an astrologer, after doing a crash course from Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, who read palms. As the script progressed, the audience got angry with us and even fought. I had to pause the performance on the second day.”
How does a new group like Crow see their role in this emerging trend? “Our aim is to build multi-sensorial worlds that the audience can explore and influence. We read a lot of science fiction and fantasy so our narratives are heavily influenced by these genres,” says Kotian.
The Floating Market work is one such example. The show is a 'magical marketplace' run by otherworldly beings selling unusual wares such as headaches, lost property and dragon scales. “The market runs on the system of barter. The audience has the freedom to explore the market at their leisure, choose whom to barter with and create their experience,” she explains. They are, for all intents and purposes, visitors to a market; not audience entering a theatre show. This changes the nature of the experience, shifting the audience status from passive spectator of a work to active participant in the work. “They are also integral to the work – the work cannot happen without them, much as a market would not be a market without buyers,” says Kotian.
The year, 2017, looks exciting for immersive theatre in India. Kotian says, “Our new venue will open in Delhi in January with shows on till April. For the 'single and surly', who are sick of sappy love songs and canoodling couples and want to do something unusual for Valentine's Day, our immersive dining experience for singles opens in Delhi this February.” The group's notable work, the Floating Market, will also return in the form of pop-ups across the city.
Meanwhile Grover is working on a non-work manual performance, to be out in March. For this, he has embedded himself as a full-time employee in a top software firm to explore the notion of work: how it has changed from the body, from the industrial age, to the concept of time, in today's technological times. “That's all I can tell you for now,” he says, with an air of mock secrecy.
