RUSTOM BARUCHA opens ADN Lab 2018 with a keynote presentation on the role of the dramaturg in performance-making in Asia, especially in bridging intra-cultural complexities. Barucha cites his experiences working on the performances Request Concert and Shakuntala.
This session is chaired by CHARLENE RAJENDRAN.
CR: Thank you, How Ngean. Selamat pagi, semua.
It's a real pleasure to introduce Rustom Bharucha. A privilege because I first encountered his books about 20 years ago and thought, “oof, I got to get my head around this kind of way of thinking and understanding what it means to be a performance studies scholar and practitioner”. and so I want to try and introduce Rustom as quickly as possible but I'm going to take a bit of time because I think it's important to understand a little bit about why he provides us with a valuable insight for this session.
As a dramaturg and doing dramaturgical work, culture and context is so crucial to our way of working and our way of understanding. And that is Rustom’s expertise, I would say.
He is just retired as Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. Now he's back living in Calcutta.
But he is, to use his terms, which I like, I use sometimes, “a theatre person” and he calls himself “a theatre person”. What does that mean? If I draw from his description of himself on the JNU website which is still there, “As a freelance director, dramaturg, writer, for more than 25 years now, between 1987 until now, he has worked on a series of interventions and uses this word “interventions” in the educational, activist, performance, and fine arts sectors in varied parts of India.”
India is huge, so it's not enough to say he’s from India, what has he done, but he's also worked extensively in the Philippines, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, Netherlands, and more recently, Germany as well. Yeah?
He's directed plays at all levels, including grassroots levels, particularly in a cultural organisation called Ninasam, about which Rustom has written in the village of Heggodu in one of the states, not where Rustom was from but not so far away where he had this very special project on land and memory with the Siddi community who are people of African descent who have lived in India for a very long time.
And then he’s worked in South Africa, in Durban, and in a project called Tangencya?
RB: Yeah, Tangencya.
CR: Tangencya, which was about the politics of touch. More recently, as project director of the Arna-Jharna Museum of the Desert of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, devoted to the study of traditional knowledge. And then he has been festival director of Inter-Asia Ramayana Festival at the Adishakti Centre in Pondicherry and advisor for the Prince Claus Foundation of culture and development in the Netherlands.
So this is just some of the kinds of ways in which the range incorporates the work of being a practitioner, thinker, writer, scholar, advisor dramaturg. And the bio-data goes on and on and on but most recently his publication “Terror and Performance” is something that I would like to recommend because I think that this is something, this is a word we use quite glibly: terror, terrorism, terrorising. And to try and unpack what that means in relation to performance is something that Rustom has grappled with in this book and he draws from his own experience in doing that.
The book that he is well-known for, I suppose, perhaps the most, is “The Politics of Cultural Practice”, thinking through theatre in an age of globalisation where this big word “intercultural” was something that Rustom grappled with and then it became a seminal book, I think, because it gets referred to again and again and again as this voice speaking back to the so-called “West”. And, of course, it's more complicated than that. I think it is about a response to culture and politics that is deeply lived and deeply experienced.
And so when Rustom said “yes” to our invitation, it was very framed because not only will he give us a keynote where he draws of this capacity to think and articulate but he'll also be part of the labs over the next three days. And so we got a chance to interact and continue the conversations which some of us were fortunate enough to begin on the plane because we happen to be on the same plane from Singapore to Yogyakarta and it is what we hope will continue to happen. So we would like this keynote to begin through the spirit of conversation and the spirit of critical inquiry but also the act of listening and responding that we are going to do quite a lot of over the next few days. So thank you for being here and over to you, Rustom. Thank you so much.
RB: Thank you, Charlene.
It’s, I have to say, very honestly, this is, all the time, pleasure for me, you know. It's always a joy to be in Jogja. This is my third or fourth time in Jogja, I first came to Jogja in 1986. I don't know how many of you were around, how many of you had been conceived, and I love this place. I think the scale of this place is really nice and I think the, the creativity is very real, you know, it's, it's very grounded, and the food is great, and there's a, it's a good feeling to this place, you know, and I, I, I really think How Ngean and Charlene, our Asian Dramaturgs’ Network, you have really hit the nail on the head with this location. I think something can happen here.
So I'm very excited about this invitation because, yes, I'm retired and many people ask me, “What are you going to do in your retirement?” and I said, “You know, I really want to do workshops and dramaturgy in different parts of the world.” That was my desire so when your invitation came, it was just fantastic, you know, it was just what I want to do, you know.
Now, this is a bit ironic. Why this desire, you know. Two reasons, maybe: I do not work formally as a dramaturg. I don't have a formal designation as dramaturg because nobody knows what the word dramaturg means. So you know it sounds a bit like hamburger or something like that. It's like, you know, I don't use that word, “dramaturg”. So I don't work as a dramaturg. I don't, I've never been paid as a dramaturg, you know. But informally, I work as a dramaturg. How? Us, actor like Maya Krishna Rao, who is a good friend, will call me up and she's just buzzing with some idea and I start brainstorming with her. You know, I start responding to her, and I realize, “Oh my god, that's exactly what a dramaturg should be doing. It's, it's nothing more than that.” But it's informal, you know, that's, I have to keep that in mind.
And the other reason why it's a bit ironic, you know, my first degree, my master's degree at the Yale School of Drama was in dramaturgy, was in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, way back in 1977. And, but nobody knew what that meant at that time so we've been getting a degree in dramaturgy but nobody really knew what the dramaturg was, had to do. Why? Your word, there's no context for it. There's no context for the dramaturg in the United States at that time. Certainly, things may have changed but if there's no context, there's no real reason for it, then why do you study dramaturgy? So we have to ask ourselves, “What are we really inserting here into this big, vast region called Asia? Do you really need dramaturgy?” We have to be, you know, we have to ask ourselves that question. “What is the need?” Well, how will it help us? How will it help all of us to do our theatre in a more, you know, in a more reflexive way, in a more dynamic way, or are we just creating a problem by introducing this role of the dramaturg. You know, we already have the director, that's bad enough. But, you know, the dramaturg, now you’re going to make it worse, you know. So these are some questions.
So I'm going to go back to 1977, when I was a student at the Yale School of Drama and our first assignment as a group of students was to edit the first issue of Theatre Magazine. Theatre Magazine still comes out and that issue focused on the most exciting theatre in Europe at that time, the Schaubühne in Berlin. Schaubühne is still around but at that time it was like amazingly strong. The director was Peter Stein and he was working with the dramaturg called Dieter Sturm. Okay, and I still remember, my god, I'd never seen photographs of productions like that in my life. There was a production of The Bacchae with a hundred thousand watts of neon lights and at that time it felt, “Wow!” Today I say, “What a waste of energy, you know, what are you doing with hundred thousand watts of neon lights for God's sake? Are we going to sit with dark glasses in the auditorium, or, or what?” but I was knocked out by that way of working because they worked with a dramaturg.
And it's a little ironic, the German theatre became my orient. So the orient, generally is associated with non-western culture. So we know Edward Said and other people have said that, oh, Goethe, and Schlegel, and Schiller, all those big German philosophers and writers, turn to countries like India, in particular, because it was in India, that they would find the ideals of femininity and beauty and art in figures like Shakuntala and so on and so forth. So they created this image, this orient out of India. And here I am, this is the irony. I'm coming from India, I'm in the United States, I'm studying something called dramaturgy that nobody understands what it is, and I'm turning to the German theatre and finding my orient out there. Because it was impossible. I said, “Wow, what a way to do theatre.” I had not gone there.
Now I'm bringing this up this whole notion of German theatre, why? Because to talk about dramaturgy and the dramaturg historically you have to reference the German theatre. There's no way out of it. It's coming from there, right? The first dramaturg, for some of you may know, some may not. The first dramaturg was this great playwright called Lessing, L-E-double S-I-N-G, who was a dramaturg in the Hamburg National Theatre between 1767 to 1769. Just two years, and I always find that very funny. He lasted as a dramaturg only for two years. After that, it was too much for him. Why? Because theatre is messy. Theatre is full of intrigue. Theatre is full of gossip. Theatre is full of love affairs. Theatre is full of complications, you know. And for poor Lessing, he wants to be a philosopher. So become a philosopher, you stay away but he lasted for two years. Okay, now what can we learn from why do we, why do we invoke Lessing? For two reasons: One, what was Lessing? Lessing was a playwright in residence.
Now, to be a dramaturg you don't have to be a playwright but you've got to know a lot about different strategies of writing. This is important, I think. So what does a dramaturg have to do? A dramaturg may have to translate a play. A dramaturg may have to adapt a play. A director might say, this is Peter Stein telling Dieter Sturm, Peer Gynt, I believe Garasi Theatre is doing Peer Gynt at the moment, “I don't want the last act. Rewrite it.” The dramaturg has to rewrite it. A different concept. Okay? So these are the kinds of things a dramaturg really has to do. For example, in Germany today, at the Schaubühne Theatre, the director Oscar Mayer has a very beautiful production of Hamlet. Hamlet is a big play, it’s a long play, and guess what? Only five actors do all of Hamlet. Just five actors. Now what does that mean? That the dramaturgs or whoever have to cut the play out. You know, cut the play up. Chop and paste, put it together, create another text. Dramaturg has to do this. This is a technical kind of job. You've got to work with the text in, in all kinds of ways. Okay, that's reason one.
Reason two. Lessing was a kind of, I would say, a critic in residence, you know? He was a critical thinker in residence. And frankly, while was there he wrote this book called “Hamburg Dramaturgy” which was offering critical perspectives on theatre etc . Very simply, dramaturg’s job is to think. But not think in the abstract. To think in the concrete. To think in the material. To think with this desk in mind. To think, “This desk is made out of wood. I am sitting next to a woman here called Charlene. I'm in a particular space. Thinking concretely. That is what dramaturgy is all about. You have to think concretely. You have to think on the job. You have to think with your feet on the ground, okay? And it's, that's the kind of, and you have to think in process. Okay? If you don't like thinking, don't be a dramaturg. That's all you're doing most of the .... You're just brainstorming, you're thinking, you're trying things out, etc. If you don't like to think, do something else. Okay? So these things we may learn from Lessing.
Now just a little bit of history. A hundred years later, from 1767-69, 100 years later, in Germany again, you have the institutionalisation of a role of profession and theatre that we all take for granted. We take it so much for granted that we think it's always been around. And guess who I'm talking about? The director.
So the director, we all think, oh my god, directors have always been there because they’re such big extraordinary figures, you know, you think of Rendra and Sardono and all these people, you know, these legendary figures and you feel, oh my god, they've been there forever! No. The director's role is very, very relatively recent in world theatre. It's just a late 19th century development. And in our traditional theatre, you know, the Guru plays role, the Asan plays a role, the senior actor plays a role, they played the roles of directors if you want. But this formal role of director is a very recent development and where did it emerge? In the courts of Germany. In the court of a guy called Duke of Saxe-Meiningen and there's an image I have of how they work. There's a table-like centre stage, there's a guy sitting at the table with a bell, and he's ringing the bell, and he's ordering crowd scenes from Julius Caesar, and saying there, there, there. Director as dictator. Director as authoritarian figure. Director is big daddy, sometimes big mommy, alright? They’re all around. They're dinosaurs, you know. I have a love-hate relationship with directors, I'll be honest with you, but this is it. I am finding it very interesting preparation for this talk. For the first time, I made this connection, “Oh god,” I said, “the dramaturg actually precedes the role of the director. That's very odd. But today, the director-director relationship is basic. If as a dramaturg, you do not have a kind of soul mate in a director, if you do not get along with the director, if he's not your, or she is not your pal, you will never be able to work. It'll just be complications. So the director-director relationship is basic. It can be a sparring relationship, you can fight with each other, it's a bit like a love affair relationship, you're yelling at each other, but that is the real relationship. Director-director. Dramaturg-director. If you don't have that relationship, and you come in from outside, it won't work. Okay? So this is something to keep in mind.
Okay, a little later into the 20th century, first decades of the 20th century, the best theatre is happening in the world, and I'm going to focus on Brecht. Bertolt Brecht. Guess what? We think Brecht is a playwright, director. Brecht was a dramaturg first. He was a dramaturg for Piscator, who was the founder of political theatre in Germany, and he was just one among 12, 15 dramaturgs in Germany to this day, one dramaturg in the theatre, sometimes five. You know, it's, it's that integrated, you know. And who are these dramaturgs? Now I have a different image, I don't see a man with a bell. I see a table, I see a lot of people, mainly men, but also women, smoking, drinking and arguing. Why are we doing this production? You tell me why. Why are we doing Hamlet in this point in time? Why are we doing it? Why? So they're trashing it out, you know. You've, you’ve encountered this, I’m sure, in your cafes, and it happens all the time. And you talk, you know, loud and you arguing and see How Ngean and all have used words like “provocateur”, you know, that's one of the roles that you love it, “respondent”, you know. This is all dramaturgy. Okay?
Now the most important principle here for us to think about. This role of the dramaturg is working within the context of a collective. This is the key. The reason why dramaturgy made no sense in America in the seventy, there's no understanding of a collective. It's a hierarchy. The producers on top, you know. There's no collective. Without a collective, there cannot be a dramaturgy. They cannot be. Now how do we understand collective? It can be used in a Marxist sense that was used by Brecht, but it doesn't have to be used only in that sense. It can be used in a more bourgeois sense or ensemble. And indeed, he called his theatre Berliner Ensemble, you know. Ensemble. Or it could be like we work today with collaboration. You've all working with collaboration. That's another kind of collective. There's no one person calling the shots. There're different people there, correct? And in traditional context, what would be the collective? Communities. It's communities who decide what we need to do and what we don't need to do with all their internal dynamics. But I'm trying to say that if you don't have an understanding or an openness to the collective, really, it won't, this dramaturgy will not make sense at all. Okay? So these were some, some broad principles.
Now what's the relationship between three figures? Director, dramaturg, critic. Let's just take those three roles. I have worked in all three capacities and there's a lot of overlap sometimes between these but they are also distinct, I feel.
Very briefly, the critic, today, frankly, we don't like critics. Nobody likes critics, okay? Because formerly, the critic was that person who would come to see a play after the play is completed. Okay? So the final product, the opening night, the critic, bloody hell, is sitting there in the front row taking notes and looking very stern. And what does this critic do? He goes home and then he writes something for a newspaper and it's like a verdict: This play is good, this play is bad, etcetera, etcetera. No wonder nobody wants to, likes critics. Okay? They're judgmental and opinionated etcetera etcetera. Point is, critic is not involved in the process of a production. Not expected to. That is the traditional notion of critic. I would like to challenge that notion, I won't go into that. Okay? But basically, traditionally, the critic is somebody who is detached, objective, comes and says, “I'm sorry, this play doesn't really work,” you know or maybe “this was interesting but what the hell”. Okay, so that's objectivity, distant.
Come to the director and we, okay, I'm being, going to be nice to directors and say not every director has to be a tyrant or a dictator or a big daddy or a big mommy. Some good directors, who are good directors? For me, very simple. A good director is somebody who can work very intimately with an actor. Very intimately with an actor and figure out the resources of that particular actor and he or she is able to draw those resources out and shape it within the framework of a larger vision. So there's an intimacy that exists between director and actor. Dramaturg does not necessarily work with actors in that way. I don't. Because it would be intrusive. I want the director, you talk to the actor one-to-one, okay? You deal with the actor. You bring something out of the actor. I'm watching you. Okay? I don't want to interfere. There, you know, it becomes a threesome or something like that. You just let them be. Okay? The dramaturg is in between. That's the important thing. The dramaturg is a liminal figure in between critic and director, somewhere in between. Okay? And we can call this a liminal role. That's a kind of a technical word, but it's liminal. The dramaturg is in between and I like that position very much.
So I'm going to indicate four kinds of liminality. Just something to keep in mind. Don't look upon it as formula, it's just to indicate a few things: One. I feel good dramaturgs are ones who can initiate a production. They can be traveling on the Metro, they be traveling on the bus, they'll see something and then that something: it could be a conversation or a person. They see a play. They see something, you know. It's like a spark. It's an idea. The dramaturg is one who, generally, I'm not always, gets that spark. Just, it's an idea. It's nothing more than that, just an idea. “Hey, I just saw this, you know, maybe it's time for us to think about, I don't know, Shakuntala again.” And it's an idea. It's a seed in the Natyasastra which is very profound text but it said, “The ‘bhija’ ”. The bhija is seed. That's the essence. It comes out of karma, it comes out in desire, you know. The seed is essential. That seed is shared, maybe with the director, they have a good relationship or with someone else over a cup of coffee or whatever. Something is shared. This is the first kind of liminal relationship between an idea and talking, and at the end of the talk they said, “Yeah, you're right. This is what we have to do. We have to do this. What.” Okay?
Second liminality. You know the “what” now. We need to do, let's say Hamlet. Now the circle widens. There are more people involved, okay, and you start the brainstorming, you start the questioning and you begin to say, “Why? Why are we doing this play?” You know, and this “why” is what fuels what I will call “a process of conceptualisation”. There is some kind of conceptualisation at work here, which should be differentiated from “concept” which is like, kind of fixed, you know? So conceptualisation is a very important part of any creative process. Okay? So with the “why” comes conceptualisation.
The third stage is, now you know why you're doing what you're doing, now you've got to do it. How do you do it? So that's the third stage. That's the rehearsal stage. That's the most delicate. The creative phase of any process. And for me, there the director is all important and we want to have a good relationship, you know. And the director then is working very closely with the actors in the, and the dramaturg is there, something like a shadow and is watching how the concept is working or not working. If you are brave, you can say that concept was off the mark, now we need to go somewhere else. Because the actors are giving us an energy and we have to go with that. Okay? So that's the third stage. It's the “how” stage.
And the fourth stage, which we tend to forget, is the production has been staged. Okay? And now you have to have an interface with the public, with the public domain, the people who are watching your work. And here, this is a very crucial political stage, maybe what you've done is a controversial production, it may be a problematic production, right? Then the dramaturg has to be that kind of person who engages with the public debate. So you see what a range of possibilities there are now. I'm not trying to say one, two, three, four. It can all be mixed up. All ways. I'm just spelling it out, just for you to think, that the dramaturg can initiate a production, and very often, is ending the production and increasingly now we have in Centre 42 and others, the role of the archive. The role of documentation. So that is something a dramaturg can also be involved in, you know, in that, in that phase. Okay.
So how do I work as a dramaturg? I think I should give you a few clues about that, and I go back to the crucial word Charlene mentioned, it’s “context”.
So number one. Where are you working? With whom are you working? What kind of theatre are you working with? Are you working with a state-sponsored big-budget theatre or are you working with a theatre like this? Because depending on where you're working, with whom you're working, and with what budget you're working, the role of the dramaturg will have to change. They cannot be a fixed model. It will be ridiculous, you know. Obviously, if I go into a state theatre, there's a different politics, you know, there's a different hierarchy, I have to behave differently, you know. But I'm working with a community theatre group, I have to work at a different kind of, with a different energy. Okay? So I have done most of my work as Charlene has said, in a, in an institution called Ninasam, and it's a theatre school. It's a Repertory Theatre Company at one time, they would perform more than hundred shows in rural areas. It's got a publishing company, it's got a Film Society, it's an amazing space. It's run, the conception of a man called Mr Subbanna who won the Magsaysay Award, he was an extraordinary human being. Now Ninasam is located in a village. I mean a village called Heggodu in Karnataka, which is actually very far away from where I am. So Karnataka is here, and Calcutta is there. To go to Heggodu is not easy, let me tell you. It's quite, quite a difficult situation. You have to take a train to Bangalore, from Bangalore, you have to take a train to Sagar. From Sagar, you have to, you know, it goes up. I am very, very happy in my life that this opportunity presented itself because if I had stayed on in Calcutta, and unfortunately, many of us in India, we tend to get region bound, you know, and you know, we just get to repeat ourselves. But when I went to the village, I'm a city boy, I come from Calcutta, I live in the heart of the city of Calcutta. If you put your finger in the middle of the map of Calcutta, you land on my house, you know. I'm right in the centre of it all, traffic and, it's crazy. And here I am, in a village. I have to change my way of working, I have to engage with what's there. Okay?
So I'm just going to focus on two concepts. Okay? What I have learned which I think are important for dramaturgy thinking again One is the concept of what I call “the intracultural”. I-N-T-R-A-cultural. Intracultural. We talk about that, which I think is hugely important in our context in Asia. And the other I will focus a bit on translation which I value very much in a multilingual context, which is also our reality wherever we are in Asia. It's a multilingual. It's not like German theatre, everything is in German, you know, it's all one language.
Okay, what's so intracultural? I'm trying to get my, where do I start?
Okay, so 1986, I returned to India from the United States. I felt I had to be in India and I returned with an intercultural theatre project. I-N-T-E-R. “Intercultural” meaning working across borders of different nations. It was a project that some of you may have read about in my book, “Theatre In The World”. It's a book, project called “The Request Concert Project”. Okay? “Request Concert” being a wordless one-woman play written by a German playwright called Franz Xaver Kroetz so I had just seen a production of “Request Concert” in New York, it was fantastic. And a few days later, I met the designer of the production, Manuel Lutgenhorst most, a German working in New York at a friend's house. So I didn't know him very well, so “Manuel, what are you doing? What are you planning to do?” he says, “You know, I want to do Request Concert in Tokyo.” I said, “That's very strange. I want to do Request Concert in Calcutta.” And we look at each other and he said, now that's the seed. That in essence. It’s that little chance encounter. And I go home and there's a dramaturgical flash. I can see the next three years and like a seer or something, I pick up the phone. And I said, “Manuel, I think I have to come over and talk to you.” He says, “I'm waiting.” I go over to his house and within 10 minutes, we decide very clearly we have something to work on. We want to do an intercultural theatre project which involves the adaptation of this one-woman wordless play by Franz Xaver Kroetz in six Asian cities. My god, we had no money but we didn't lack dreams. So we were going to do the production in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, of course, I’m the local Indian. We were going to do it in Jakarta and we did it in Jakarta. And then we went to Seoul and Tokyo. Okay. Shoestring budget but believe me, exciting. Very exciting work. I don't think it can happen now because things are too expensive. I mean it's a different point in time I had, I regret to say that Manuel passed away. Very. It's, it's always very hard to acknowledge the death of a friend. It's, it's very difficult. Anyway, I'd like to speak of him in, as if he were still alive, you know, in that moment. So it's an intercultural theatre project because he's German, I’m Indian, we are working on a German play in Asian context, therefore intercultural, right?
And now what happened? What is this Request Concert? Let me tell you a little bit about it. So it's a one-woman play. So it's a life of a working woman. Okay? She comes home from work. She switches on the light. She gets into her house clothes. She makes herself a cup of coffee. She smokes a cigarette, watching the television, news, the news of the day. She switches off the television. She makes some dinner, she makes some dinner. She sits down. She eats her dinner, listening to a radio program called Request Concert, it's a music program. And then she washes the dishes. She goes to the toilet. She comes out. She does some embroidery. Then she switches off the radio. She prepares for next day's work. She gets up and commits suicide. So that's the play. And for Kroetz , the suicide was meant to be a protest against the kind of regimentation of her life. That was his interpretation. Obviously for us, in our context, suicide is a reality for women. And women commit suicide and men commit suicide for all kinds of reasons. So there's very clear to us even though we were not politically correct or anything in those days. Obviously as two men directing women in a play about a woman who commits suicide, you're asking for trouble if you don't know how to go about engaging with this very sensitive issue. So without much agonising, and I must say this is what was so nice, the organic process, the women who were playing the roles including Chandralekha who danced the role in Chennai It’s the first time I met Chandra, Usha Ganguly in Calcutta, Sulabha Deshpande in Bombay, etc. The actors became the co-directors of the production, so it was a teamwork and they decided whether or not the suicide was valid or not. So some actors rejected it. People like Chandralekha completely rejected the suicide. Another actor played it like a question, more Brechtian kind of. The third one suspended it, etc. I won’t go to all those details. The point is, while I was working in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, in three very different locations, in three very different regions of India, where there are three distinct languages used. Bengali, Marathi, Tamil. Okay? While I was working with all of these things. And I was dealing with food, I was dealing with radio culture, I was dealing with, everything, costume. I realise it's not the intercultural that interest me at all. It's not about what happens to a German play in an Indian context. I was now going , What is the Indian context? What is the Indonesian context? And I realised that if you actually open up that word, Indian or Indonesian or Malay or whatever or Singaporean, there are internal cultural differences that exist within those seeming homogenised realities and identities. Those internal cultural differences are what we have to be very attentive to. Like, if I look at you now, you are all Indonesian. If I look at you more carefully and I get to know you, some of you are from Jogja, some of you are not from Jogja, maybe. Maybe for some of you, your language at home is different from the way you speak the language here. But on the surface you are all one, you know, and that's okay.
But if you're working a little more closely with context and with cultural differences, the cultural differences are not between American, Indian. It's too obvious. The, the real cultural differences are those that exist within a particular context. So I became interested in the intracultural. Okay? These internal cultural differences. And this is something I feel when you are calling your network the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network, obviously “Asia” is there, use for strategic reasons I would say, but when you are actually working on the ground level, we are opening up all kinds of difference. Indonesia is a vast country of many islands with many languages. Okay? And those are the differences that I think we have to be very attentive to. Okay, with this comes language. So I think you probably know India has 23 official languages. Official languages. And eight scripts. That means eight different ways of writing. Okay? You guys in Indonesia were much, much more, I would say, practical because way back in 1928, your national figures and freedom fighters decided one nation, one language, and Bahasa Indonesia was created. So that is your link language. In India, our language politics is far more complicated. Now what happens? The question is very practical. What do you do? If you want to work with actors and theatre people in a context where you don't know the language. What do you do? You want to work with them, you have something to work with them, but you don't know the language. So how do you work? Practical question.
This is something I've had to work on. I'm sharing it with you. So one. There’re two ways of answering the question. One, you could take, I would say it's an evasive answer. It’s not wrong, entirely wrong, it’s a bit evasive. And what is that answer? The answer is “Theatre has its own language.” All theatre has its own language. This language of theatre is a syncretic language. It's made up of music and dance and gesture and expression and silence and rhythm and sound. That is the language of theatre. Yah. And we can all respond to that at a nonverbal level.
But let's be honest. Among those components, the spoken word also plays a role. We can’t deny that we don't speak. I'm speaking to you in English and very conscious of the fact that it may not be reaching everybody. So how do we work around this, this challenge? And this is where I would ask us all to think about translation. Translation, not as something that is done in a study by some, some academic and who then gives you a text and say, “My work is over.” No, I'm not talking of that kind of translation.
I'm talking of translation in practice. And talking about translation in the, in the rehearsal room itself. Translation as a dynamic and interpretive force. And this is something I have found very exciting and I can share because I've done a lot of work in this. See, when I work in a language I know, let's say English. I'll be honest with you, I can become a dictator very quickly. I can tell you exactly what I want and what to do. And I can imagine I know what's in your mind. That's the problem. Okay?
When I don't know the language I am directing in which is Kannada in Karnataka I have to become first and foremost, a listener. You have to listen, you know? That is true for any art form. You have to listen. And second, you don't just listen with your ears. You listen with your body. You listen with your entire body. You're listening with your eyes. You're listening, see how he is holding his fingers, that I’m noticing. There, look how she's holding her pen and she's writing a sentence over there. Look how she was smiling and now she's, now, she's not smiling anymore, now she's smiling again, you know? So I'm listening with my eyes. Okay? and sometimes when you don't know the language, everything else gets more sensitised. Remember that. You will lose, you, you will not understand but that means everything else becomes more alert. You’re more alert to touch, you're more alert to visual, etc, etc. So listening with your body. Okay? And what happens then, I say, “Translator, please, come here. The actor has a problem here with this line that you have translated. What is the problem? Okay. What do you make of that problem?”
So you start arbitrating. You become an arbitrator in the, in the course of the process. And what happens then is a kind of a dialogue begins to emerge. It's no longer a command structure. Even a command with a smile is a command. No, but this is more of a dialogue. It's more like, you know, “What do you think? What do you think? What do you…” and, you know, I have to tell you I don't use this word very often, that it is somewhat more democratic in working in the theatre. Because you cannot assume you know it all. You cannot assume this. And you may actually find that the actor is the best translator in that whole problem. Very often, actors are the best translators, let's face it, you know. So these are the kinds of two principles that I’ve got. I don't want to go on and on. I could go on forever.
Let me just say dramaturgy, like anything else, is intuitive it’s organic. Okay? And if you, it comes, if the idea for the play comes out of an improvisation, and I could give you a huge example of what’s that in this context, and you see the play coming out of the actors, and then you say, “I now know why I have to do this play, in this point in time.” That kind of dramaturgical process can be very, very rewarding. However, there can also be a process where you have a great concept. So for example, I won't go into it because it's too long, it'll take one hour, a production of Shakuntala I did. My concept was I worked with the Siddi community you mentioned. The Siddi are persons of African origin. You'll also find them in Indonesia. They originally came from Africa as soldiers or as sailors or as traders or as slaves. Okay? And they are scattered in India, there less than 50,000 Siddi. I was working with a few of them in, in Ninasam. They are agricultural laborers. I worked with them on land and memory, I won't go into that. After that experience, it was very rich, I thought, Shakuntala. what if I cast a Siddi woman as Shakuntala? That was my idea. I want a black Shakuntala. And you know that's a concept because black Shakuntala goes against the entire canon, the entire tradition where Shakuntala's always fair and beautiful and Aryan and so on. But if you put an Adivasi woman who is a woman from, an indigenous woman as the protagonist, you're opening up a lot of things. And it was a good concept. But if you ask me did the production really work? I would say, “Maybe not.” “Maybe not because it was my concept and it was not coming out of the group of people that I was working with. So there were other technical problems, I will not go into that.
But I'm just trying to say, I am just saying that you know, listen. Listen to the group dynamics. Listen to the collective. Listen to those internal cultural differences within a particular group, you know, and open yourself to that. And sometimes, you know, your big concepts may not work because it is not really coming out of a dialogue. It's not coming out of the context in which you are working, you know. It doesn't mean you shouldn't have big concepts but don't be so carried away with that, that's all I'm trying to say, you know? Ultimately, you have to do theatre with people, individuals in a particular space, in a particular time, at a particular historical moment, and you have to decide together: What is, what should we be doing at this point in time? and why are we doing it? and how do we want to go about it? You know I could go on and on but I think it's enough. So I would rather have questions coming from you and then I can, I can share more examples with you. Okay?
CR: Thank you.
RB: Thank you.
[Applause]
CR: Thank you very much, Rustom, for taking us into a little bit of history but history that then bridges into what we do and think about now and some of the contemporary struggles that we navigate as directors, dramaturgs. Basically performance makers of one sort of another. Artists and thinkers even. We have critics in the audience as well who are willing to be here and part of the process. We do want time and space for response and dialogue and so while you're collecting your thoughts about what you want to ask. I’ve been tasked to be a respondent and start the ball rolling.
Rustom, I, I’m particularly struck by what you're saying in relation to a kind of subjectivity of the work that is being done, right? Whether it is of the dramaturg or the director or the critic or the all-in-one, sometimes and the way which these roles get sometimes problematised but sometimes get opened up by the kind of naming that occurs.
RB: Yes.
CR: And that’s one of the things that this lab is trying to understand and work with as well. And when these names, like the word, the naming of the dramaturg has a history in German theatre and one of the things that we did in the first ADN was have a session in which you try to understand what are the other words in and around Asia that are used when referring to the dramaturg. So for example, Helly Minarti who was there, introduced us to two words that are used here: a Pendamping, who was somebody who kind of sits alongside and accompanies, in a way. And a Penganggu, who is a disturber, a kind of interrupter, a kind of provocateur, in that way. And there were a few other examples from China, in particular, where it was, I can never say that word, but basically the idea that this is a person with authority and as a kind of consultant and there is the hierarchy is even more entrenched. Right? And I'm wondering whether there are words in the Indian languages that you're working with or that I use, but also what you think of the way in which these subjectivities and namings get worked through in practice, right, so, so there's something about the structures that are presented and, and names on a program, for example, and you’re invited to be the dramaturg but then, then what you're saying is that these things get reconfigured, reworked. Rearticulated in some ways.
RB: Yeah, that's very, very pertinent. You know, earlier I was talking with How Ngean, that in many Asian languages, in India, like, we don't really have a word for “performance” the way the word “performance” gets used as a, it, it, it's… the problem with the word “performance” is I teach it in English. It means too many things, you know. We can talk about the performances of everyday life. We can talk about the performances of politicians. We can talk about the performances of identities, okay. And then we can talk about performance more in terms of acting, which is how we tend to understand it, and we have, you know, Abhinaya, and words like that that but even Abhinaya would be used more for the classical traditions or the more traditional. You don't, if a modern actor says, “I do Abhinaya.” It would be a little bit of a joke, you know. “I act.” is what you say “I’m actor.”
Now, I think the fact that, you know, ties up a little bit what I was saying, that I don’t work formally as a dramaturg. Okay? But I work informally as a dramaturg. I work creatively as a dramaturg. Why? Because the society around me doesn't know what dramaturg means. But, you know, in a very semiotic kind of sense, that's not gonna stop me from working like one. So, you know, it's very interesting about language, and I, traditional performers, interestingly, use, in India, and saying, use the word “rehearsal”. The word “rehearsal” has entered the vocabulary. It's been integrated. “Yes, I'm going for rehearsal.” You know, it's not a, pondered or conceptual. The language has entered because there is a use for that category, you know.
So at this point in time, we are in transition, I would say, and you guys are the pioneers in a way because you are actually trying to activate through your naming, you see, Asian Dramaturgs’ Network, you know. You have inserted the word “dramaturg” into, and now whether you like it or not, the ball has been set rolling. Now, what, who will kick the ball in which direction we don't know. You know? Whether these guys want to be called “dramaturgs” or not. Now see “director”, I brought up “director”. We have no problems with directors in Asia. Tells us something about authority, doesn't it? We love directors. There’s been, never been an agonising “oh, we don't need directors.” You know? Everybody wants to be a director. Rattan Thiyam and all those people that we've had in India. Big figures.
But dramaturg is a different, is a new category. Okay? So I would say, let's not get too hung up on the word. Maybe I love what you're saying about alongside, provocateur, and authority figure and all those things are indeed things that a dramaturg can do but the director can also be authority figure but I like the idea of provocateur as the dramaturg raises questions, you know, that make you think a little bit. Like in Shakuntala, in my production. In the seventh act, when Dushyanta meet Shakuntala after he has rejected her so brutally. And he's all apologetic and he's got the ring in his hand which caused all the problem. And he says, “Please take the ring.” And she says, “No, I don't want the ring. It's too much pain. It's too much suffering in that ring.” It's very interesting, Kalidasa does not specify in any stage direction whether she accepts the ring or she doesn't accept the ring. There's no stage direction to that effect which means the director is open, I would say, to interpret that moment any way you want. So that these are ways in which you work. I would say, let's do the work. Let's see how something can happen. And if the company feels, ‘hey, this is interesting. This is useful.” Let's go with it. If we don't then we don't need to hold up to it.
CR: Thank you. Open to the floor. Please raise your hand and then someone would bring you a mic because we are recording it so even though it's not such a big space it helps for the recording.
RB: And please…
CR: And you can ask questions in Bahasa Indonesia…
RB: …Bahasa Indonesia, please.
CR: …and somebody will translate and, no problem.
RB: Because I, I want to just say that when I talk about translation as practice, I mean it. And I, I think for me, this is the only way we can really begin to open up new questions, you know.
CR: Yup.
RB: I really feel I would love to hear Bahasa Indonesia and in, and English and whatever way. But please feel free. Just if you have a question on your mind, I'm very happy to answer it.
CR: Or a comment.
RB: Or a comment.
CR: Yeah, or a comment or a response.
RB: Yep. Marion.
A: Yeah, thank you very much. I’m Marion D’Cruz from Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. You mentioned last night, that dramaturgy for dance…
RB: Mm, is different.
A: …is a whole different ball game.
RB: Yah.
A: So, maybe just expand a little bit of that?
RB: Sure. Thank you. Thank you. That’s a, I think a really intriguing question. I was just telling How Ngean, coming here that the best dramaturgy for dance was to be found in Pina Bausch. I, I really think she understood it for dance. She understood it. And she understood it because she was not doing theatre dramaturgy in my view she was doing dance dramaturgy in a very strange way.
And how would I classify this? I've seen a lot of dramaturgy of dance where there's a lot of text, for example, this is one way of reading. And I find it very text heavy, you know, many of these new productions. Dancers telling you about their own personal feelings when they're waiting in an airport, you know, waiting room and my mind says says, “Shut up what are you talking about?” You see, I'm so rude. But Pina Bausch would just take one line and she would integrate the line into the rhythm and the, the actual movement of the piece. I still remember seeing Nelkin, one of her productions, amazing production, and she had the standard way of dancers at the back of the stage and coming up to the front of the stage and sing something absolutely crazy. And she would always tell her dancers, “Don't talk like an actor. Talk like a dancer.” Beautiful. I mean, just like, [snaps fingers] you know, she's got it. It's a different voice, I, I would like to believe.
You know, now, of course, there are different productions, not everybody has to do a kind of Pina Bausch type of thing. But I feel that, okay, the problem with theatre dramaturgy can be, it gets text-heavy, it gets concept heavy. You know? That is a trap. That is a real problem, I feel, in a lot of our work. And dance, being movement-based, you know, in many different ways, of course, I feel there are different sort of dynamics that have to be kept in mind. The rhythm has to be kept in mind, movement has big energy has to be kept in mind. Energy of dance is not quite the same thing as the energy of a theatre actor, at least in a realist play. It's not the same thing. But I, there are many dance companies now that are using dramaturgs. Many. And they obviously feel the need, conceptually to have it. But from whatever I have seen in Germany, at least, I find it too text heavy. I find it too, the, the, the structure and that is what dramaturgy is always, I, ultimately dealing with structure. The structure of a particular piece. You know how it unfolds that kind of thing. I find it too emphatic. Too, too, too, too beating you on the head with something, you know, whereas I want the dance dramaturgy to have work with a different kind of subtlety. And I think it's, it's a very, very interesting area to figure out how that happens, you know. Different choreographic structures, you know. Have many images but I won't go into it. Yeah.
Yep. Please introduce yourself.
A: Hi, I’m Corrie a researcher from Singapore. I was curious about, you were talking about the post-production role of the dramaturg…
RB: Yeah.
A: …interface with the public. So curious what kind of effective strategies, I’m thinking of whether it’s a post-show dialogue or discussion or smaller dialogue group of audience members or ???, maybe you can elaborate on it?
RB: Yes. See, I don't know in cinema culture there's always a post-screening open space. Always. One of my students is actually, who was working on documentaries, one of her chapters in her PhD dissertation was on this post-screening discussion and she says it has a very different kind of dynamic and she was studying it in terms of performativity and all of that. I think it can take on many different forms. It could be a press conference, it could be an activist meeting, like activist may say, “We did not like the way you represented such-and-such role.” It could be that. It could be with the theatre …. like after with the audience, I have to do that at Yale, it was very difficult, you know, just talking to audiences who were very bored by a production and you have to stimulate and then maybe try and deal with the prejudices. And sometimes, in the kind of political times we are working in and if you are doing controversial work or, you know, provocative work, you can face very tough resistance from political forces, you know, whom I say object to the way you are representing a party religious group, or you know, or they may be objecting to a line or a, you know, this is happening all over.
So these are when theatre gets very contentious, and public. Theatre is public at the end of the day, you know. Even if you’re, it's working in a very solitary way but you, ultimately, it's being performed for, it by, for at least one person. And so it takes on many different forms depending on what kind of a theatre culture you're in. For example, if there is censorship in your culture, theatre culture, then how do you negotiate that as a dramaturg? And as you know, in Singapore, the script has to be passed before, you know, you can do it on stage, you know. So, but that doesn't prevent the censors from objecting to, you know, and that could be a very interrupted moment. They stopped the play and they say, “No, you can't do it like this. This is not what we gave you permission for.” A dramaturg has to step in at that point. So it's a political role at that point. It's, it becomes quite a tough role. It doesn't mean the director is not there but the dramaturg is there and knows how to handle the politics of that situation. You know, you have to speak in a certain language, you have to be tactful, you know, you don't want to be more provocative then. You want the show to go on, you know. So those are the kinds of tactics a dramaturg has to deal with. It's a political role. The dramaturgy is a political role, I would say, like everything is in theatre in my view but the dramaturg, probably a little more so.
CR: I'm gonna respond. I’m just gonna respond with an example. And Marion can correct me if I get the details wrong. That Five Arts Centre used when there was censorship in a play called “Elections Day”, written by Huzir Sulaiman. There was no dramaturg in the production. It was directed by Krishen Jit , written by Huzir Sulaiman and performed by Jo Kukathas . And the play had been performed before but at this particular point in the early 2000s, there were certain words that were censored, like names of people, names of products like “Guardian Pharmacy” and various things like that. Some of which seemed a bit strange but some of it were clearly about the politics of the day. And the playwright reworked the text so that, let's say, instead of referring to a particular politician who is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, he referred to this person as the lady who always wears pale blue covering or headscarf, so something like that, you know. So that everybody in the room knew who was being referred to without a name being mentioned. But the company, I don’t know if there was a particular person who decided, but the company, as a kind of dramaturgical response, pasted in the lobby, the original text and then cancelled out, to indicate to an audience what had been censored.
RB: Interesting.
CR: And what was very interesting, I think, if I remembered the story correctly, is that the officials who came were very happy because they felt that the public would see they had done their work. [Laughter] Right? So Marian can give you further details but I think that…
RB: This is dramaturgy.
CR: This is a dramaturgical intervention.
RB: Absolutely.
CR: Without an actual dramaturg in the production but it takes on how that responsibility to the public continues. And I’m sure there are other examples but that one comes to mind.
RB: I have a very strange example. Early Indian history, a very famous play by Indian playwright called Vijay Tendulkar which showed a rape on stage. Okay? So there was rape. And the woman had to come out and I think, I personally would not have liked this kind of representation, but it comes out with blood, you know, on her saree. And so, blood is red, you know, and so it was censored. So they continued with the blood, but the blood turned blue. So it was very obvious that, you know, there was a censorship. So that was. And this is way, way, way, many years ago, people didn't know anything about dramaturgy but obviously that was a dramaturgical intervention in response to censorship and that doesn't have to come at the end of a production. It can come during a production, it depends. And how you are able to respond to that moment.
CR: We have time for one more question and then we will have a break because there are further sessions and we have refreshments so the conversations can continue.
RB: Yeah, will go on.
CR: But does anyone else have a burning question? Yes. Janice.
A: I’m Janice Poon from Hong Kong. I would like to follow with the question on dance dramaturgy because you mentioned there are lots of dance pieces which is text-loaded and which, in your opinion, what would be a good performance text for a dance piece? Or how should it be structured? Can you share it with us some examples ?
RB: Yeah, I guess it's so difficult in the final analysis to generalise about any art practice because there are so many ways of doing it. Like, it could be that your dance piece would just be a woman seated at the table reading a script, you know, with just a few gestures. It could be that, it could be very minimalist, in which case the text becomes, you know, really important. But if you are going to be dealing with a piece that requires a lot of movement and requires a lot of lights and sound and, you know, then my question would be, “What is the role of the spoken word in that?” That would be my thing. “How do you negotiate the word?” You know, because even in theatre, you know very well, when you teach acting, the word is in the body, you know. The word cannot be separated from the body. The fact I am speaking now, I'm coming out, it's coming out of this body at this point in time with a particular breath, etcetera etcetera. So it, in dance that gets more heightened because of the demands made on the body. You know, like I might be asking a dancer, “I want you to run, you know, like, in a huge circles, like lightning speed. And I want you to repeat one line, you know, from, let's say, Ophelia's line or whatever.” You know, and how do you then deal with that? You know? How do you, how do you train an actor?
Now so what is it, the training becomes important, you know, because if a dancer is always were made to, you know, do certain kinds of, what we would say, other rules or, you know, certain kinds of movements. But there's no word. Now the moment you insert the word, you know, in our Sanskrit traditions were “angika”, “vachika”. They are separated. “angika” is when you work with the body, “vachika” when you deliver it, voice and movement and, but when you bring it all together as it can happen in certain traditions, something happens to the body and something happens to the voice, you know. But it's also understanding that relationship between body and voice. How do you train an actor for that? So this is not so much dramaturgical question as this is training question. It's not even a directing question. What is the actor training? You know, this is, I think very important, you know. What kind of, when I told you my Shakuntala didn't work. Well, to share it, the actors had no training, in movement. I just wanted a simple movement. Just a very simple movement. Simple movements can be very difficult. It's the two sakhis of Shakuntala and they're plucking flowers, you know, in a garden. And while they're plucking flowers in the garden, they're talking about something that is disturbing in the atmosphere, that's all it is. Okay? Now my blocking was very simple. I said, “You have to move on a circle, you can pluck as many flowers as you want but you've got to say the lines, okay, and you've got to keep the same beat. The beat has to remain the same. Now that requires some training. It's a simple movement, you know. So you're free to improvise, pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck, you know, but I have to hold the line. I have to say the line, moving away, and I have to keep the beat. The taal has to remain till you reach a point when there is a disturbance, okay? Now if they don't have the training for that then my dramaturgy or my direction or whatever you want it, will not work. You know, it just will not have a, because they’re not trained for that.
Any other question? Yes. Please.
A: It was very interesting to hear the role of dramaturg as someone who is involved with collective, taking responsibility, and you called it as …???, which is a little bit different from some other definitions of dramaturg as kind of someone having the third person’s eye or viewpoint.
RB: Yes.
A: And I, sorry, I cheat, I have two questions about that.
RB: Yes.
A: One, it is that, the fact that such definition of dramaturg as the third person, and the background to it, in my understanding is because the performing arts world is becoming more personalised, that it belongs to the director or choreographer, so coming, his or hers, rather than collectives.
RB: Yes.
A: I would like to know if you agree with that?
RB: Yah.
A: And the second question is that you talked about you being director and you become a listener through translation.
RB: Yeah.
A: And in that situation, what’s the role of a translator?
RB: Yah.
A: Because that, the translator seems, speak in a position of third person.
RB: Yes, yes.
A: But is she or he still working or functioning as a dramaturg?
RB: Yes. That's a very nice question. Thank you. Yeah. You know, you use, the first word you use that resonated for me was “subjectivity”.
CR: Mm.
RB: You know? And we can never afford to ignore subjectivity even within the framework of the collective, you know. If I am a sensitive dramaturg, I am interested in each and every one of you as I would as a director, you know. And your subjectivity matters. You know,
I worked in a prison in South Africa, and maximum-security prison. A play, devised play, they were creating crime and the first scene of that play was performing crime. So we weren't trying to say, “Now you're a good citizen, you're a good daddy, you're a good son.” No. Perform crime. And the subjectivity of each of those prisoners, inmates, was very much present in that collective space. And I don't think we, in theatre, if you ignore subjectivity then it becomes boring, you know, then the collective becomes like a political meeting or something where you have to vote according to a certain line and I don't, I feel the whole point of theatre is that you can nuance and you can bring different textures, you know, to decision-making and I think that's in Brecht , actually. You know, there are many different points of view in a collective. So I would say, you're right, it's getting more personalised. I hate, I have a problem with personalisation of that thing, you know. But subjectivity within the framework of the collective is something we should try and aim for. That would be one thing.
And I like your question about what happens to the translator. Yes, the translator becomes a kind of dramaturg. The translator is, you know, I've had this situation doing Peer Gynt. I'd love to talk to Garasi actors because I believe you're working on Peer Gynt and I've done Peer Gynt. And it is very interesting, my translator was using a dialect, okay, for one of the characters but actually he, his own home language is not that dialect. His home language is different. But the characters, like the woman playing the character, that was her home dialect and she was saying we do not use this expression, we do not use it. But he says “I am saying, I am an artist.” like “I am telling you this is a better way of saying it.” She said, “But I am telling you we will never say this words. We will never.” So now what am I going to do? I don't know between the two of them, I am the arbitrator, you know. And I am actually saying, “You know, I think the actor has a point. The actor is telling you this word is not working.” You know, you know. So yes, the poor translator then is compelled to be a kind of discontented dramaturg. You know, he says, “This is not my, not my choice.” You know, but then I'm the director so I can call the shots and I could say, “No. I think the actor is right.” So there is Authority. You know, you have to use authority in a very, kind of strategic way.
But, you know, in our theatre culture, let's not forget this, there's been a lot of flexibility and that's how we managed to do theatre. Without flexibility we won't be able to do theatre. Flexibility literally means multitasking. You know, I have done everything. I mean after a point, it became too much that's why I don’t direct anymore. You’ll end up picking up the props, you’ll end up, you know, paying the bills, you’ll end up doing everything, you know, it's too much. But that's how we function. In, in a more, in a, in a context where people can switch roles, you know. That doesn't happen in many so-called professional theatre cultures. In my school, Yale school drama? No. There were seven departments and you kept to your seven departments. If you’re a dramaturg, you are a dramaturg. If you're director, you're a director. If you're a designer, you're a costume designer, you're a scenic designer or you're a technical designer. It's all slotted and I, not sure I really respond to that kind of professionalism because I don't believe at the end of the day, theatre works like that, you know. I think you know as Stanislavski would say, “There are no small roles, there are only small actors.” Every, every person in that company has a role to play, you know, and can offer a creative perspective. That's what I'd like. I feel we should not let go of that and there's no reason to think that Germany, it’s model, German model, is our model. Not at all. For one thing, I can make a little bit of a joke here. The biggest limitation of German theatre? No humour. [Laughter] Zero. And that's something that will not work in our part of the world. Because if there’s one thing we don't lack, it's laughter. It's laughter in all circumstances, in all, against all odds, we laugh. You know, they don't know how to laugh. That's a big problem.
CR: I think on that note. I know there was another hand that went up. Please, we will have your question and then we will laugh through tea and coffee and food.
A: [Speaking in Bahasa Indonesia]
I: Sorry. It’s quite a long, and it’s quite profound. I’ll try to convey as close as possible as I can. I think the main question probably is that, “What is the role of the dramaturg in analysing, in observing, in commenting audience response?”
RB: Mm. Nice.
I: Yah.
RB: Nice.
I: The public, of perception of performance, yeah? Because his take, of course, is that in the German school, like what you pointed out, the director, , is the authority of what the play should be. He, she does not take into consideration public opinions. There is a thought, of probably saying that, that the dramaturg, obviously, has to play the role of bridging…
RB: Yes.
I: …between public response or audience response to performance. Right? But is it a two-way thing? Meaning that, how does the dramaturg also bridge the audience to the performance before or during performance-making.
RB: Okay. That's a very nice question. I think, yeah, the dramaturg is a kind of a bridge. That's what I was, he pointed out the liminalities, the four kinds of liminality. That, I think that's how we started this question. Yes, the dramaturg is a “bridger”, you know, is a kind of a liaise or figure, you know. But we have to be careful that the dramaturg doesn't play too safe, you know. The, if, for example, there is a controversy, like you had a controversy in your field. When you say “bridging”, what exactly is involved in that, in that kind of function, you know? I would say that you don't have to say, “No, no, no, no, this is not what we really meant to do.” You, you would have to have say, “No, we really did mean to say this. We're sorry that you're offended about that, you know. Our intention was not to offend you. Our intention was to make you think about this, you know. So I think that bridging role should not become one of what I call “public relations”, you know. A dramaturg is not a public relations officer. He's not a PR officer, you know. I'm not a publicist, you know. That's what has happened to critics. Critics have become public relations officers. That's the problem. They're being bought and they are selling things. Our job is not to sell, you know. Although, maybe the manager of the theatre will say, “What are you doing? What kind of dramaturg are you? What kind of place are you doing? There's nobody in the audience.” Okay? That can become an issue, you know. But I would say, yes, bridging by all means but not playing safe. Not trying to, you know, let go of the politics of what one was trying to say. So in that sense, I would see the dramaturg also being as a kind of, a kind of a guardian. Not a guardian in a very oppressive sense but as somebody who is defending the way a particular work was put together, you know, collectively. I feel this is our job and not to be, to just go along with the pressures of the time, you know, and say, “Sorry, sorry, we didn't mean that.” No. A dramaturg’s role is political.
A dramaturg has to hold on to the vision that has been decided on collectively by a company and yes, he or she has a responsibility to engage in debate and dialogue. It could be a debate but it doesn't have to lead to conciliation, like, “I accept what you're saying.” No. It's a bridge, you know, and the bridge can be a bit of a rocky bridge, you know, but not one that collapses, you know. So yeah, I think this role of the public is something we do need to take on and you can't take on everything in one workshop. This workshop, if I read it, is focusing on the third stage which is the process. The actual artistic process, you know, where there are different interventions, and I think it's a very delicate process, you know. And maybe at some other point in time, when there's more time and if there is a finished product then we can invite an audience into, you know, into the space, and then, you know, and then see, have a different kind of dialogue, you know?
CR: Quick one.
A: Yah, yah. Very quick.
CR: Response.
A: Because it relates to…
I: Sorry, I think there’s a bit of clarification…
CR: Just a quick response. Yeah.
I: Go ahead, Marion.
A: Oh, yah. So just because it relates to this audience. So in that same issue for Election Day, besides pinning it up in the lobby, we also had a discussion with the audience for every show. So we had 14 shows and after each show we had a discussion with the audience for those who wanted to stay back and we told them exactly what happened. “This play happened in 1998, there was a problem, now, …, we were asked to take …” we went through that. We went through the whole process and we were supposed to get a permit that we were supposed to display, they never gave us the permit. They never gave us the permit, they said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you carry on.” So actually we did the play, illegally, and they came every night, and we gave them front seats, we let them record because they wanted to check whether we were doing what we said we would do.
RB: Yes, yes.
A: But for us, the important process also was the engagement with the audience…
RB: With the audience.
A: …after each show because we feel this issue of censorship is not just a problem for the practitioner but the audience has a role. What does the audience want to see? .
RB: Yes.
A: What does the audience want to see?
RB: Yah. Thank you.
CR: Thank you very much, audience and please join me in thanking Rustom.