Page 303 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

278 Hema Rairkar

recognize themselves in the representation. Five songs were carefully
chosen by the group as particularly consonant with the message of
the play.
At one time, during the learning process, it was thought advisable
to ask each actress to have an overall visual representation of the
particular moments and movements of each scene and of all the scenes
in their sequence to master the unfolding of the action better. Each
scene was graphically projected on a board, then on a picture with
the movements and the places of each one. As the drama was to be
performed in a public place in the open, the spectators would always
surround the actors and automatically delineate a circular space for
the performance. One hundred round cardboards were prepared for
each small action to help players decide upon and locate the places of
their acting. The success of this detour proved to be very relative: the
actresses were far from being used to a written vision of the reality and
still less of their behaviour in a ‘cartesian’ space. The scenes meant to
recreate the village atmosphere were also studied on such cardboards.
It turned out that the use of a video camera and a TV screen, which
would immediately show the actual gestures and behaviour, would
have been more helpful in allowing the actresses to visualize their own
gestures as well as the movements of them all. An attempt was made for
such an exercise, but as the players saw themselves on the screen for
the first time, they were naturally engrossed in closely observing their
image and body and not paying attention to their overall movements
and their global synchronization.
Regarding the choice of form and their concrete articulation,
the experience suggests two things. The connection between social
experience, analytical reflection, critical judgement and theatrical
articulation builds up here at once in a definite socio-historical context,
and with a view to inducing a process of transformation in this given
context. All dramatic action must thus be localized and personalized in
order to really be a carrier of a striking message. This is the specificity
of this form as well as its touchstone. Today, in another time and
another socio-cultural environment—the modern context of an action
group—peasant women re-invent and link up with the intention of
elders from whom they have unfortunately not been able to inherit
the dramatic heritage. Still, the latter do not remain far from them
in time, as exemplified by forms of popular drama, collective songs
and dance by J. Phule, A. Sathe, B.R. Ambedkar, the Rashtra Seva