{"id":919,"date":"2020-12-01T08:40:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T08:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/?p=919"},"modified":"2022-02-05T10:10:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T10:10:57","slug":"the-performance-of-protest-in-a-post-covid-world-a-theatre-critics-perspective-from-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/the-performance-of-protest-in-a-post-covid-world-a-theatre-critics-perspective-from-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The Performance of Protest in a Post-COVID World: A Theatre Critic\u2019s Perspective from India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Deepa Punjani<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Just before COVID-19’s first lockdown in India, there were huge protests against a new arbitrary and discriminatory citizenship law. The performance of protest and resistance which has had a long tradition in India was an integral part of these protests. The lockdowns that followed targeted the protesters and the performers. This article deals with these protests and the performers, stressing on the symbiotic relationship between art and politics. It elaborates on the live-ness and immediacy of these performances that cannot have an online or a digital parallel. 
Keywords<\/strong>: Hussain Haidry, Aamir Aziz, Roger Waters, Sambhaji Bhagat, CAA NRC protests, Surendra Gadling, Stan Swamy, Suvarna Salve, Bhima Koregaon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pandemic-Induced Performance<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In keeping with COVID times, on June 8, 2020, the International Association of Theatre Critics organised its first online conference to discuss and debate digital theatre and issues surrounding it from the academic to the aesthetic, from the phenomenological to the philosophical. While these inquiries are not new to theatre, which is forever the most evolving and transforming among the genres of the performing arts, the onslaught of COVID-19, and its continued development, is an event that demands we push beyond the recent iterations of digital theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To do this, we will need to be expansive in our inquiries as well as be courageous. We will also have to restrain, perhaps even deliberately so, our aesthetic response to the performance per se, and critically examine the larger ramifications of the pandemic in the context of theatre in particular and the performing arts in general\u2014we must critique holistically and with understanding of contextual barriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will need to view the pandemic-induced performances as not merely showcases of varying creativity, but as expressions that are necessarily confined by the pandemic, no matter how ingenious these may be. This confinement, which we share as viewers too, is not entirely obvious, and can even appear to be compensated and glorified by the Internet\u2019s ability to connect humans far and wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It becomes necessary, therefore, to emphasise that I refer not to videos of live performances that allow us to experience performances which we may not otherwise have the opportunity to watch live, or which can prove to be a valuable visual archive. The sophisticated technology accompanying videography of certain live performances is not an outcome of the pandemic, as we know, but has instead existed for several years now. Here again, we are necessarily watching mainstream performances most of the time, with little or no access to a variety of theatre as it unfolds against unique sociocultural backgrounds while taking on multifarious forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post-COVID performance, on the other hand, is a creature spawned by necessity, as well as by the itching and irresistible need to be digitally connected. Technology is an enabler, and there will be no dearth of imagination as a new generation of digital theatre artists and their interlocutors emerge. AI and cybernetics may even re-imagine theatre and live performance in surprising and innovative ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything is possible, but here is the rub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even this theatre must be experienced in the same space at the same time for it to be legitimately called theatre. A screened theatre performance is a mediated, hybrid endeavour at its best and a negotiation at its worst. We may speak of the spirit of such experiments, but for now we would be remiss to sideline or ignore the social and political paradigms of the pandemic amidst which a range of these \u201cnew\u201d performances have emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic is effectively the largest social re-engineering project of our modern history. This seemingly bloodless feat would not have been possible without the digital technology which stopped being benign long ago. The pandemic has thus simply reaffirmed autocratic tendencies emanating from the vested corporate interests of tech oligarchs to State repression in which surveillance is paramount. Thus, the data barons and the State work together, and even reinforce each other, in spite of the frictions they need to constantly manage. Meanwhile, our basest fears are now regularly exploited under the pretext of our health and our security, while political polarisation is actively encouraged and supported by social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, no consensus is the best consensus, and dissenters are merely troublemakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More significantly, as we are aware, the pandemic\u2019s draconian measures have led to a rippling effect wherein entire artistic ecosystems have collapsed or are barely surviving, thus leaving all those employed in the arts and entertainment sectors fundamentally vulnerable. A health crisis has fast turned into an economic crisis, where recovery is as unstable as it is unpredictable. Even beyond the arts, entire populations have been left desperate and hungry, while public health systems in countries worst hit by the pandemic, including India, are brutally exposed. This is then a tragedy of gargantuan proportions amplified by the decline of democracy, the subversion of independent institutions such as the media and the judiciary, the proliferation of fake news and the relentless suppression of dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a scenario such as this, theatre critics must fundamentally realign their priorities. Deep questions must be fearlessly raised even though the answers may be uncomfortable or not immediately forthcoming. As observers of the shows we watch and write about, we must work towards consolidating our voices as part of an independent and free media that speaks as much of the amazing possibilities that theatre offers to being its fieriest anti-status quo voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The View from India<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

On March 22, 2020, India went into its first COVID lockdown, which was not only arbitrary and hasty, but also unimaginably inhumane. The first victims of this shutdown were the migrant workers, many of whom died in the long walk to their homes. This has now come to be regarded as the greatest displacement of people with the greatest suffering since the Partition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As lives and economies continued to collapse in subsequent lockdowns and the health system broken, the mainstream media barely reported on the various emerging crises and, instead, targeted a Muslim order known as the Tablighi Jamaat as a super spreader of the virus. The role of this Jamaat now stands vindicated by at least one judgment of the Bombay High Court, but the atmosphere was already vitiated by communal tension and hatemongering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, something more sinister had begun to unfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n