World Theatre Day: Remembering the NSDF and Ebrahim Alkaji

 

 

27th March is commemorated as the World Theatre Day, ever since it was first celebrated by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) on 27 March, 1961. Theatre is one of the effective ways of communicating science to the people and that too in an entertaining way. Theatre in India, is one of the oldest art forms, alongside music and dance that continue to thrive in modern days. Theatrical performances of mythological stories like Ramayana and Mahabharata and, the most renowned of all the plays, Shakuntala provide us an insight to the rich historical traditions of theatre in India.  Indian Drama, over the years, beginning from the ancient Vedic Age, has moved on to the classical theatre traditions, influencing the modern theatre. Looking back in time, the historicity of theatre in India is evidenced in the Rig Veda. The epics of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Artha Shastra are instilled with specific techniques of dramas. Sages Valmiki and Vyas and Panini have shed decisive light on theatre and Patanjali has heartily contributed in his Mahabhashya that there existed two dramas, namely - Kamsa Vadha and Vali Vadha. Actors not only served as dancers but also as musicians.  Bharata Muni, is acknowledged to be a legendary author of the Natyashastra, the very first Sanskrit work on dramaturgy. The treatise says that Bharata was the one who popularised the Natyaveda, created by Brahma, on the Earth. He is also said to have collected all the material of earlier acharyas like Tumburu, Narada and Nandi and gave the Nayashastra a complete coherence by making additions, alterations and adaptations according to the requirements of time and space.

 

 British cultural anthropologist, Victor Turner, has said; “for cultures to survive and grow, we need exploratory moments when we can step out of the routines of our busy life into a selective, dramatic re-enactment to express public opinion and sentiments on key issues of our communities. We become so narrowly focused on every day, pragmatic efforts to make our communities and societies ‘work’ that we forget where we are going in life”. This is why we need a cultural space which is midway between the utopian, mythic aspirations of our communities and the daily struggle to survive. Theatre provides this cultural space in which actors symbolically represent the struggle of the community, but in a frame of plot resolution that points to the searching debates to possible idealized goals.

 

Theatre is as old as human community, which has emerged as religious-civic ritual, lyric poetry, and popular entertainment and as political protest in virtually every culture across the world and so has it been for India. No essay on theatre in India will be complete without remembering Ebrahim Alkaji. a doyen of Indian theatre who founded the National School of Drama. I had the honour while serving as the Director of NGMA Mumbai to host an exhibition of Ebrahim Alkazi and I also had paid my tribute to him when he bid adieu to this world. Those who are interested may like to read my tribute on my blog whose link is appended below.

https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/08/eulogy-for-ebrahim-alkazi-doyen-of.html

 This essay of mine, however, is confined to Science Theatre (Drama) and how this medium was effectively used for science communication by Science Museums in India under the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM). Theatre can combine elements of art, music and sport, and develop students’ creativity and so also their fitness and their emotional and aesthetic awareness. As team activities, theatre promotes communication and co-operation among young learners.  Theatre can be used as an effective medium of learning while being entertained. It can convey, with a substantial dose of theatricality, important and socially relevant information generally not available on the stage in to the minds of general public. 

Science theatre is increasingly staged across the globe because it can play an important role in science communication while also effectively addressing social, ethical and moral issues that stem from rapid developments in science and technology in the current era, which is inextricably linked to S&T. Science Centres in India including the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai, have used this medium effectively in science communication. National Science Drama Festival (NSDF), which is one of most effective programmes of NCSM, is an ongoing annual creative event for the school students. The World Theatre Day is celebrated to create an awareness on the significance of theatre.

 Modern science has dramatically changed the world around us and is affecting all our lives in many ways. We hear buzz words like global warming, gene therapy, stem-cell research, nanotechnology, radiation, etc. every day. Moreover, we begin to realize that beyond dealing with intriguing discoveries and technical problems, scientific progress has social and ethical implications that should be addressed by the society. In contemporary theatre this is reflected by an increasing number of ’science plays'. Theatre can play an important role in effective science communication and also help in removing superstition and blind beliefs. Science Plays or Theatre are now increasingly focusing their attention on societal and ethical issues and creating awareness on socially relevant scientific issues that are so essential for the modern world.  Theatre has been used as one of the effective ways of communication in driving home the message of the efficacy of vaccines in India and perhaps this is one reason why vaccine hesitancy in India is much less than in most of the western countries. The theatre and so also art in its various forms, help in communicating science to the masses.

NCSM started using theatre as a medium to engage school students in researching on scientific and technological subjects and in scripting, directing and enacting plays to express their opinion on diverse scientific and technological issues. Students who perform in these plays as directors and actors are not renowned artists, yet their performance and their approach in addressing scientific issues with ethical and social aspects have been truly praiseworthy. Over the years the National Science Drama Festival (NSDF), organised every year by the NCSM, which, starts at the block level and progresses to the District to the State to the Zonal and finally to the National level, has become one of the most popular science communication medium of the Council. Ten teams, two respective winner teams from the five zones; North, South, East, West and North East, are selected to participate at the National Science Drama Festival. Leading theatre personalities and scientists who have witnessed the dramas at different levels, especially the ones that are selected to participate at the National Level, have showered high praises and commended the thoughtful thinking of the students in presenting their plays in the most professional way.

The students who take part in the NSDF carry out extensive research on their chosen subjects and prepare their script and enact their plays in a most effective manner to try and address the social and ethical issues that come with the cutting edge research on scientific and technological developments while highlighting their benefits. 

Theatrical actions link education and entertainment, consequently becoming a highly effective didactic instrument. Science museums across the world are using this medium as an interpretative technique to communicate science from the point of view of the goals pursued by museums, of epistemology and of theatrical research. Hopefully, theatrical communication of science will become common practice among practitioners of public understanding of science. Science and theatre, two different human activities, each with their own historical background and specific features, began to interact in the past, and today they are “strangely” linked. There is a real interaction, starting from theatre and ending with science or, vice versa, starting in a scientific setting and developing theatrical features. Or, again, new relations are the fruit of meetings between researchers, actors, directors, philosophers and scientific communicators.

The phrase “scientific theatre” has been coined only recently, but it has immediately produced a lot of heated debate and questions. Providing a definition of scientific theatre is no easy task: the relationship between science and theatre is so variegated as to defy any precise expression. The definition would in any case remain ambiguous, as it indicates an extremely wide range of experiences. Theatre, contemporary or not, has often drawn on the world of science and has often expressed its conceptions about it. The union between theatre and science exists also in other domains, pertaining neither to criticism nor to rational reflections: the universe of human passions. Science activity is a particular way of making sense of the world that mankind has created, which is not only a cognitive process but is also characterised by passion, it is a story of passions. So the main goal of scientific theatre is to come into contact with these passions, to understand those who have felt them and to put these passions on stage. In this way theatre offers an original and riveting way to deal with the greatest questions about the sense of the world, life and science, questions which, on the contrary, would risk remaining abstract and vague.

Scientific theatre teaches scientific facts and concepts at the same time as it entertains the public. The elaboration and production of “ideal” scientific theatre performances seem to require, however, a close cooperation between scientists, researchers, scientific philosophers, playwrights, directors, actors, scientific communicators and animators: only in this way can service quality be guaranteed, with regard to the educational content, the communicative effectiveness and the epistemological awareness. When using theatre as a means to communicate science and ideas, epistemological problems immediately arise, since a debate on science cannot be conducted without giving (and having, more or less consciously) an image of it. So what is the image of science emerging from such shows is of paramount importance.

 Some of the recent science dramas which have received international acclaim include the plays “Oxygen” by Carl Djcrassi. This play tries to answer the question, “Who discovered oxygen?” The setting for Oxygen is based on a fictional encounter between Lavoisier, Priestley, Sheele and their wives, at the invitation of King Gustav III.  The place of the discussion is Stockholm, in the year 1777.  The Central question is, “Who discovered oxygen?” The play is also about doing science, politics and ambitions.  There are other plays on science by Michael Frayn which suggest a wide public interest in the history of science as well as in science itself. This play is based on the meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941 in German-occupied Denmark where they discussed the possibility and consequences of harnessing nuclear power.  The play is also about loyalty, suspicion and friendship.  The setting for Copenhagen is more modest: Heisenberg is in the home of the Bohrs, with Mrs. Bohr as an important participant.  Here the central question is, “Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen?”  Both plays have been praised for the excellence of their dramatic design as well as for the correctness of their historical and scientific content.  They received high acclaim from historians of science and scientists alike.  What is important is that both plays have elicited much public and academic discussion.

 Science Museums and Centres across the globe have now started using science dramas as an effective medium of science communication. London Science Museum, for instance, engaged an actor in 1987, and has now an entire theatre company with a repertoire of more than forty performances ranging from real plays on stage to character monologues presented in the halls of the museum. Theatrical performances vary: there may be single actors presenting themselves as renowned scientists of the past, or even groups of actors representing chemical elements like hydrogen atoms or even biological cells.

Science Plays on biographies of scientists have been phenomenally successful. Ramanujan’s life story is so awe inspiring that movies and plays about him have been and are being produced. The first was a superb documentary about Ramanujan in the famous Nova series of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) on television, which described some of his most appealing mathematical contributions in lay terms and some of the most startling aspects of his life, such as the episode of the taxi cab number 1729. In 2007 a play entitled   A Disappearing Number was conceived and directed by the English playwright Simon McBurney for the Theatre Complicite Company. It first played at the Theater Royal in Plymouth, England, and won three very prestigious awards in England in 2007. This play was also performed at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India, in August 2010. The latest theatrical production on Ramanujan is a movie that is now being produced in India based on Kanigel’s book The Man Who Knew Infinity.

 Many of the science plays, including some described above are examples of the theatre being inspired by the exciting and often mind-blowing stories of science. But it is intriguing that the traffic has not been one way. Increasingly science is exploiting the vehicle of theatre to communicate its ideas. London Science Museum has created a piece of narrative theatre called the Energy Show to teach kids about energy.  

Ever since NCSM started the National Science Drama Festival there are countless such examples where message of science, ethical and social messages, the concepts on science and biographical portrayal of life and works of scientists have been very effectively portrayed. This year will be no exception. However, what is needed is a close cooperation between scientists, researchers, scientific philosophers, playwrights, directors, actors, scientific communicators and other professionals only in this way can service quality be guaranteed, with regard to the educational content, the communicative effectiveness and the epistemological awareness, which it is hoped will happen sooner than later.  

Wishing you all a very happy World Theatre Day.

Images - Courtesy - Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai and BITM, Kolkata

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International Women’s Day: Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.

Since historic times, women in India have found a prominent place in society as evidenced in the artistic expressions depicted through paintings, murals, art, culture, iconography and so also in scriptures, which depict women’s power, importance, and reverence that Indian society has bestowed on women.

One of the oldest reference, which advances women’s position in Indian society can be traced back to the iconic dancing girl cast in bronze, which was sculpted at Mohenjo-Daro during the Harappa period. Harappa civilisation has also revealed many more evidence that has represented women in paintings, terracotta figurines, sculptures, gold figurines etc. These material evidence indicate that women had a life beyond the confines of the four walls of their home and they enjoyed a social status. It is also believed that the Mother Goddess - from the findings of Harappa - is an ancient version of Devi Lakshmi from Hindu religious beliefs. This tradition of representation of women and their reverence in society has continued for centuries from the Harappa times, which is evidenced all across India in temple art, architecture and iconography.

A shloka from the Manusmriti, exemplifies the reverence that women enjoyed in Indian society; “Yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra Devata, yatraitaastu na pujyante sarvaastatrafalaah - meaning where Women are honoured, divinity blossoms, and where women are dishonoured, all action, no matter how noble, remain unfruitful. Unfortunately, although there is so much of a material evidence to suggest high stature of women in Indian society, yet it is paradoxical that women continue to face discrimination in our modern society. The situation so grim that even in the third decade of the twenty first century (2022) women have to demand for gender equality, which should have been a given by now, but unfortunately it is not. Notwithstanding the legal provisions, preference for a boy child is rampant in India, which also leads to female foeticide and discrimination by family members. It is in this context that commemorating the International Women’s Day makes sense and reinforces the need for introspection.

International Women’s Day (IWD), commemorated globally on this day- 8^th March -  is an important occasion for the global community to commit towards attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, in which gender equality is one of the important goals. Therefore, it is no wonder that the theme for this year’s IWD is “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow”. This year the IWD is celebrated with a beautiful universal campaign ‘Break The Bias’, which reminds me of a similar highly successful all India campaign, which was launched on August 15, 1988. After the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, finished his address to the nation from the Red Fort, a soulful melody took the nation by storm. For most Indians who watched the broadcast on Doordarshan, the opening lines of “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Sur bane Humhara” sung by the legendary Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi continue to stand the test of time. Hopefully, this year’s IWD and the theme and its slogan touch the same chord that the Pundit Bhimsen Joshi’s eponymous “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara” touched us all in the years ahead and help in advancing the rights of the women’s issues for a gender-equal world: a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination.

The genesis for the struggle for equal rights by women began in the early 1900s. The oppression and inequality were pushing women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Looking back in history, it was on this very day – 8^th March - in 1908 that the women labours movement started as a united march in which some 15000 women marched in an organised way through the New York City demanding shorter working hours and better pay and right to vote for women, who until then were treated unequally not just in US, but globally.  Encouraged by the response that the women’s march received, the Socialist Party of America joined hands and demanded for declaring the day as the National Woman's Day. The idea to convert this day into an international women’s day came from Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, who tabled the idea of an International Women's Day during the International Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen in 1910. She proposed that every year in every country, there should be a celebration on the same day to press for change. The conference was attended by more than 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties and working women’s clubs and thus was born the International Women's Day was born.

In the very next year, 1911, this day was celebrated as the Women’s day in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. However, it was only in 1975 that the United Nations (UN) acknowledged and started celebrating this day as International Women’s Day. Unfortunately, women have always faced discrimination through centuries and the discrimination has spanned all areas of women’s lives and that includes my own field - science, as well. The women, through the centuries, have been afraid of social stigma in case they complained of discrimination or harassment and therefore they have preferred to remain silent both at home and in workplace. The social fabric of many countries, including India, have been biased against women.  Notwithstanding this inequality there are many exemplary women who have made profound contributions in every field - sports, science and technology, art, defence, medical, engineering, social sciences, political and what not. For increasing the participation of women it is incumbent that on we all join hands to promote education of girls and create that indomitable spirit in them to succeed in the field that they chose to pursue and help them in making themselves a priority of their own lives. We must create an ambience where women will learn to say No to all that is unfavourable to them and boldly face the challenges of life.

Today as we celebrate the International Women’s Day it is time to recall those extraordinary women of substance and indomitable spirit who have made their mark and have distinguished themselves admirably. Take for example Marie Curie, one of the greatest of scientists who has won two Nobel Prizes - one in Physics which she shared with her husband and one in Chemistry. She should be one of the icons whose trials and tribulations, before attaining her extraordinary achievements, even in times of extreme gender insensitivity, must become an inspiration to our youngsters. The COVID 19 pandemic has impacted the world and even in these trying times the medical doctors and health workers have played a stellar role in saving millions of lives. Speaking of health workers one must not forget the Nurses (Sisters) whose selfless service has been exemplary. The year 2020, when the COVID pandemic started, was the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the par excellence nurse. On the occasion of her the bicentennial birth anniversary, the year 2020 was befittingly declared as the ‘International Year of the Nurse and Midwife’ by the World Health Organisation. There are innumerable other women who have made such extraordinary contributions to human society.

In the field of sciences FRS is a coveted fellowship, which has 400 plus years of history and some of the greatest of scientists - Newton, Einstein, Darwin, CV Raman, Srinivas Ramanujan etc are all FRS. A couple of years ago Dr Gagandeep Kang, one of the leading microbiologist of India, was elected to this coveted fellowship. Prof. Kang is a physician scientist, who for many years worked as a Professor of Microbiology and Head of the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences and the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory at the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore. Prof. Kang has made pivotal contributions to understanding the natural history of rotavirus infections as well as other enteric infections, which are important causes of mortality and morbidity in India. She was also involved in the development of vaccines. Similarly, we have many more examples of extraordinary women achiever’s in India in almost all the fields. Women in India have donned almost all the key positions Prime Minister, and President included. Women have excelled in sports, particularly in Olympics where they have won many medals for India. We now have women who are heading Space missions as project directors and are involved in satellite launches and so also in missile launches. Women are now flying the fighter planes and are excelling in every field that men have had their dominance for centuries.

Does this mean that it is an equal world that offers equal opportunities for women, unfortunately not, rather it is far from it. Yet, women have achieved excellence and for this they have had to perform many times more efficiently than men, which is a hard reality in many parts of the world - India included, where women play multiple roles, as home makers, mother, wife and as a successful professional and that too in an unequal society. Women have made profound contributions in social, economic, cultural and political life of the country and today as we celebrate the IWD it is time to salute women who are contributing to the society in equal measures and remember some of distinguished women like Madam Curie, Sarojini Naidu, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Kalpana Chawla and many more including the unsung heroes like Roslyn Franklin, Margret Hutchinson and many more whose extraordinary contributions have gone unheralded.

This is the day to salute womanhood and propagate against gender discrimination, domestic violence and to empower them to excel in all walks of life. It is also the day we must reverentially remember that women have been bestowed with that God gifted power of motherhood, a natural gift of multitasking and consensus building, which have enabled women to become transformational leaders in their own right.  

On this occasion, I would like to appeal to all young girls to persevere to excel and look up to those innumerable women achiever’s as your role model and demand and command respect in an unequal society and hope that the theme for the IWD - Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow will truly be a reality sooner than later. Jai Nari Shakti Jai Hind.

Wishing you all a very happy IWD.