Not a passing stage
Let’s salute the never-say-die spirit that will find expression, regardless of hurdles. Perhaps it’s their way of escaping a reality that seems unendingly painful. By leaning instead into the alternate reality their art offers. Actors are taking up the challenge of doing without their most vital prop: an audience. Unlike birds who will sing regardless of whether they get a response or not, actors, and others working in the creative space, need feedback. Evoking emotion is the role of theatre, which in turn feeds off the response.
As any performer knows, the audience plays an important role in making or breaking a show. Comedians whose gags and quips find no response fizzle out like damp squibs mid-show; while a hearty bout of laughter delivers an instant charge of adrenaline.
Equally important for any artist is the response they might receive after the curtains come down. Indian audiences, especially in the metros, are strangely lax about clapping, more intent on leaving the hall to start back home in time to prepare for the next day, but artists can look beyond the half-hearted applause when fans throng the passage backstage to show their appreciation and shower praise. Many even invite honest criticism as a way to improve the show.
Of course, none of this has been possible for more than a year now. Though some theatres have cautiously allowed audiences to fill half the seats, the new surge of cases will end that careful move towards normalcy. Yet, art needs must find expression, and adaptability is the new name of the game.
Enter the camera. Long considered part of quite another oeuvre, cinema. Debates on the joys and perils of performing before live audiences whose energy fuels the stage show versus performing for the camera which allows for retakes are stilled as the camera moves into live theatre spaces to take the place of the audience.
Actors need to rise to the challenge; and many seem ready, willing and able to do so...imagining an audience, even as they imagine themselves as someone other than who they are, inhabiting a world removed from their own, for the duration of the play. New skills are learnt, for emoting in front of a set of cameras might involve altering movements, lighting and much more. But directors are equal to the challenge obviously, as more and more plays move online. The show they say, must go on.
So let us then raise a hurrah for the stage in its new avatar. For the spirit of theatre that will not be quelled. And enjoy the luxury of sharing the play being staged in any part of the world, with friends across the globe. In its own warped way, the pandemic has knitted the world closer, after all.
Sathya Saran
saran.sathya@gmail.com
Author & Consulting Editor, Penguin Random House