TALK: Dreams of Taleem

A FREEWHEELING CONVERSATION WITH SUNIL SHANBAG

Where did you get the idea to make Dreams of Taleem?

Well, I had decided to do Chetan Datar's Ek Madhavbaug but found that it was written at a time in several histories–the history of theatre, the history of the gay movement etc. Chetan, very often, would present the play as an attack on fascist writing and the arrogance of the playwright who, at will, can change an ending to suit a dramatic purpose with no sensitivity towards a character, where the characters don’t have an autonomy. I chose to see it differently, more as a groping to explore an alternative world, or an alternative set of beliefs that are equally valid. That is what attracted me to the play.

On one hand, you have this young man who is grappling with these issues, on the other hand you have the mother who belongs to the mainstream, who is also grappling with it. In the original, the young man never appears, it’s a monologue, he’s only spoken for. I wanted him there in my version, so when I first started doing a production of Ek Madhavbaug, I actually cast a young actor to play the role of the son.

However I began to feel that the representation of the young man’s world or his struggle, was not adequate. It needed a fuller and more nuanced representation. I talked to Sachin Kundalkar, who had a very conscious understanding and a point of view of gay politics. He brought in further insight. He felt that what the son in the original was talking about happened five to six years ago, that was where they were at at that time. Today, relationships have been forged between two young men. Now, the politics is what next, what happens to the relationship, what is the future of that? Now, the politics is how does society view a relationship that is out of the closet and already formed, and already being played out.

So, the original Ek Madhavbaug was a bit dated, in that sense. So we needed a layer that talked about the new politics. And in Sachin’s mind, he wanted to include the theatre world in it, the actors, the rehearsing, that is the world in which he has grappled with these issues. So all that you see, has come out of these things. It’s not come out from any need to just have a positive representation, but from the felt needs of different people. I had a certain set of needs that I wanted to fulfill, Sachin had certain creative urges that he had to satisfy, and if there is a certain representation of gay politics in the play, that because that’s how Sachin views it, or how he has chosen to represent it. These are issues he has been confronted with.

So there is no hand-holding as such… do the audience already know what to expect when they walk in and are suddenly introduced to the interior world of two young men in love? We start out with a monologue from Anand Tiwari, and then the other actor walks in and there is an interplay between them, a tenderness, which makes them a couple. Not everyone in the audience expects that to happen at the outset.

I hint at it in my synopsis so that people already know that this is a play that is to do with the relationship that a young director has with his assistant, another man.

Did you feel that you are in a way introducing these concepts to your audience. Would you approach it in the same way five years down the line? We take these things for granted, that two men can be together in a meaningful relationship, but did you need to spell it out explicitly in the play?

There was no pressure to do so. The fact is that it may have happened, but it also depends on from which point of view you are viewing it. If you have been part of the gay movement, you might find some things fairly fundamental and basic. If you’re not, and for a lot of people this is a very new world, then you might find it already too sophisticated. You might have other fundamental questions. For e.g. Anay’s mother doesn’t know anything. So she wants to ask, who does the cooking, who does the housework, and who does the shopping. You know, that’s how she has been conditioned, that's the way heterosexual relationships have usually been defined.

In my experience, most people actually stopped worrying about the fact that it was a gay relationship, and looked at it as something universal. Even in the playing of it, I was very very conscious that none of the actors should play obvious gay characters. There are certain cliched representations of gay behavior, gay mannerisms, of gay physicality as slightly effeminate. If you notice, it’s not there at all in the play. That’s a very conscious decision, it didn’t just happen. I know enough people from the gay world, to know that behavior isn’t necessarily defining.

What is defining is maybe the sensitivity, or the sensibility, but for me those things don't matter. Whether you’re passionately in love with someone of the opposite sex or the same sex, for me that passion, and the commitment, the betrayal, these are the things that matter. But, to Sita–the actress, who is in the business of understanding relationships, she wants to  know that why is it exactly the same as if you were a man and a woman? It's the same sense of insecurity, the same possessiveness, then what’s different? I think that’s a very important question she raises. The thought she brings up–you’re suffering exactly as you would if you were in love with a woman. She’s looking at it from an actress’ point of view.

If you look back at the love-scene, which you have presented with tenderness, was that incidental to the play, or were you looking to make a statement about the nature of the relationship between two men. In other plays, homosexuality is used to provoke, sex is used to provoke. Were you able to present it without those implications?

Actually (Satyajit) Dubeyji raised a very important question. He said, if it was a story about the love between a man and a woman, would you have the actors embracing similarly? I don’t know, to be honest, probably not. But, it was also something that Sachin had written in very clearly as part of the script, it’s there in the instructions. So, I felt that there is a point to this. I tried to see if we could make it tender. I’m not saying that the actors have achieved it, it was not easy for the actors. Anand (Tiwari) has a very interesting statement he made. He was very comfortable in rehearsals, but when we did a costume run-through, where his shirt was ripped open, and Suvrat's hand touched his bare body for the first time, he recoiled. It was a very different touch, on bare skin. The intent was to ask why is there physicality in a relationship?  I think physicality brings in a certain level of intimacy, which words cannot replicate. That why we ask the question, why is love-making another stage in the manifestation of a relationship between two people? I think that’s critical. I’m trying to approach that, if it doesn’t work that’s a different matter, but that’s the intent.

But were you trying to normalize the relationship in a way?

Well, I want the audience to understand very quickly, that we are talking about a serious relationship here. It’s not just about two guys saying ‘I love you’ to each other, those words are used so casually today it confuses me. If I were to say that to someone, it would be a very deep emotion, a commitment to an idea.  It was very important for me to establish that this relationship is beyond words, it’s also in the realm of the physical.

Did you try to court queer audiences for your play?

It’s not as if I didn’t try and court a gay audience, I did send word out through friends. There are anyway limited expressions of gay ideas in cinema and theatre, where they’re not being represented as stereotypes. On one hand, I’m actually quite disappointed that we got trapped in the kind of politics that was really outside our realm. Most of us, not being part of the gay movement, realized that the gay world, like all other worlds, was fairly insular in its own way. After doing shows in Pune we were a battered lot! There we got caught up in the politics of theatre and the gay movement that Sachin had drawn upon, we got caught up in the personal histories that people brought with them to the staging. We couldn’t make our voices heard, and our voices were merely a representation of this text. 

But on the other hand, why should a gay audience be different from any other audience? That struck me hugely when I saw Ek Madhabaug, performed by Mona Ambegaonkar at a queer film festival. I realized that they were responding just like any other theatre-goers, they were going for the laughs, none of them were being moved by the agony and the angst of that character. She didn’t play it that way, nor did they respond that way. What I realized was that our play is too painful for a gay audience, it’s too truthful. Any audience would find it difficult and in that, a gay person is no different from anybody else. A gay person is not always looking to see gay issues represented, he likes his entertainment. This assumption that because he is gay, he is carrying a flag all the time, I think that was a very stupid sub-conscious assumption on our part.

But, I should tell you that some of our more nuanced and felt responses to the play, have come from audiences who have an understanding of what is going on in the world, but who are not necessarily part of the activist gay mode, people who are definitely not part of the politics of theatre, and people who have no clue of who Chetan Datar was! We had such a audience in Bangalore. Those three performances were completely out of all the baggage that was burdening this play. The audience bought their tickets, sat at their seats, and watched the play for what it was, and it was such a felt response. Those three shows made me ten times more confident about this play, then anything else. And thank God for that.