BENGALURU: With the election fever at its peak, many political parties are tying up with theatre artists to come up with street plays as part of their campaigns. Parties are using them as a medium to reach out to people to talk about their work.
Theatre person Malur Vijee, wrote an hour-long script for a street play for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaigning. The script mostly consisted of what the party has done in the last eight years.
“It’s about their plans and how people have benefitted from them. We have tried to weave all of it into a story. For example, through the play, we have someone who essays the role of a BPL card holder and speak about the benefits they have got from it. The play starts with a song and includes tunes from a musical instrument to call for a gathering. Then, we discuss why they should vote for the party,” explains Vijee, who, along with his team has created 40 teams in Karnataka. “Each team has 10 members who take care of 24 constituencies,” he adds.
Theatreperson Rajguru Hoskote directed a street play campaigning for the JD(S) to highlight the ‘grassroots-level work’ done by the party. “It’s a farmers-oriented party so we wanted to depict that in a story format. The advantage of street plays is that people can directly ask us questions, so we can’t completely script the play. We need to be able to provide some answers too,” he says.
Not just the political parties, theatre groups are also coming together – without associating with any political party – to create awareness about the right to vote. Hanu Ramasanjeeva, theatreperson, says, “We usually do street plays in south Bengaluru and target areas which have lower voting numbers. We feel people need to be educated on how important it is to vote. So we try to cover those areas. We did some homework about the area with low voter turnout, based on which we chose the areas where we would create awareness. Based on last year’s percentage, we went to Mangammanapalya in HSR Layout and Tilak Nagar in BTM,” says Ramasanjeeva.
Students of Shree Daksha Academy recently did a street play near Magadi Road. Dilip BM, principal and joint secretary of the college says it was an attempt to spread awareness. “Street plays were created to spread awareness. When we look at any Russian or Greek street theatre, the philosophy was to directly connect with people. For example, in case of advertisements, there’s always a choice to read it fully, just glance through it, or even ignore it. In a street play, you are talking to a person making direct contact. Talking to anyone face to face has more impact than going through any other channel,” explains Dilip.