Monday, August 8, 2022

Theatre Play- Deewaar

This play is also hosted as a part of Theatre in Education intership project by the interns. 

Deewaar is a play written by David Holman, devised by Pooja, Somesh & Kamlesh. There were two kind of people, red people and blue people. They lived in peace and had a bridge where red walks into blue land and blue people walk into red land. Due to one small misunderstanding, red and blue people fought and it broke into violence. To solve the problem, they built a wall. 

The wall divided everyone. The blue does not know how red lives and red does not know how blue lives. What happens when they meet is the story. I find a lot of power in this play. 

I love this play for the way, it triggered the audience. Somesh facilitated a dialogue between actors and audience. Actors turned into characters. Audience turned into actors, becoming the part of play. 

On being asked more about the process, Abhishek explained about forum theatre. This form of theatre is created by Augusto Boal. Augusto Boal is a revolutionary in the theatre. The way,  he created this form is interesting.

In 1960s Augusto was touring int he poorest places of Brazil staging productions where the actors encourage the locals to act against the oppressors and spill their blood. One day, a peasant comes in and asks the actors to join them to go against the land owner. 'But our guns are fake.We don't kill in real.' they decline to go with the peasant to fight. 

Peasant was dejected as he realised that the actors don't participate in what they encourage others to do. 

Augusto realised that he was not prepared to take the same risks he was asking others to do. Then he stopped writing the plays which gives messages. From there, the forum theatre is born.

Back to Deewaar now. 

After the actors performed, we, audience, had a long dialogue about the play and what it is about. A few said, we can't resist powerful. A few shared, we can start questioning our traditions. One suggested the importance of thinking. Other appreciated the guard, finding father in him. 

After that, the guard guard who makes sure no one crosses the wall was welcomed for a dialogue.  Ankit, who played, as guard was stating his position well while we, the audience were coming up with a lot of thoughts. Not everyone were on the same page.

After two hours, I realised that the dialogue is a huge takeaway for me. From mere spectator, i became, Spect-actor. Good work team. 

Mohit, Shreya, Kritik, Ankit, Shefali, Kalpana, Vaidyanath, Ashish & others were in the play. 


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