Beyond bollywood bhangra...

Theatre beyond words threw up some interesting personalities to interview. Whether you agree with their ideology, aesthetics or not, what's worth admiring in each one of them is the tireless passion with which they're paving the way for something radically new in their sphere of work. It takes courage and dedication to unbelong. Was especially impressed with Mansingh's work becasue she touched a chord. Her work is an answer to the Punjab-isation of Bollywood or Bollywood-isation of Punjab, that so many of us frown over. Punjab is more than just the stereotype that popular culture has imposed onto it. Mansingh, then, is truly breaking stereotypes. Here's a look at her efforts...

When the convent-educated, NSD graduate, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury, first performed her play Kissa (based on the Heer-Ranjha folk story) in 1984 in Chandigarh, the audience was disappointed. “They came expecting a play in English, following my reputation of being from an English-speaking background,” Mansingh recalls. That reaction made her resolve of making plays in Punjabi — a mother tongue which she had forgotten because of moving away from Punjab — even stronger.
“The people of Punjab have abandoned their own language. They speak in English even among themselves,” says Mansingh, who took up the challenge of learning her language again and bringing the glory back to her mother tongue and culture. “Somewhere down the line, there had been a major image distortion of what Punjabi and Punjabiyat seemed to represent. It was supposed to be about this rough language and robust culture, which has only thrown up bhangra and gidda. This projection of Punjabi culture was very different from what I’d learnt from the folk tales and Sufi influences and the rhythms of Punjabi life that I picked up from my parents and grandparents when I was growing up in Amritsar. I wanted to go bring out that side of Punjab again,” she says, explaining the motivation behind starting her theatre group The Company, which insists on using regional aesthetics to put forward national or Western themes.

“I got a chance to work with the acclaimed theatre director B V Karanth, when I was staying in Bhopal. He told me, wherever you go, you must work in the local language and with the local people,” she tells us of the two lessons that she has always followed. “Language to me is not only about scripts and sounds; it’s about capturing regional impulses, regional energy, myth, history, emotions and so on,” she says. Though her plays are steeped in regional essence, the appeal is universal. The stage has a lanuage of its own and the energy that doesn’t need words to be communicated. Thus her play The Suit, based on a South African tale dealing with apartheid and performed in Punjabi, finds an admiring audience in Pune.
“I had no first hand experience of apartheid or of caste realities in India. But the story had enough rupture in itself for me to develop on it,” Mansingh, who brilliantly transformed the basic conflict in the original play to one of gender politics, explains. ‘You can’t be truly contemporary without having strong roots’ is her message, which she’s effectively putting across various stages in the country and beyond.