Tripurari Sharma: Out in the Open

Tripurari Sharma has conducted numerous theatre workshops around the country to develop scripts around social issues and local problems with women’s groups, college students, factory workers and others. She has developed and directed many productions for her own theatre company Alarippu, as well as directing such plays as Galileo (B.H.U. Varanasi); and Six Characters in Search of An Author (I.I.T. Kanpur). For The National School of Drama in Delhi she has directed Adhe Adhure, and her own Kaath Ki Gaadi [The Wooden Cart]. She was the Indian Representative at the first women’s playwright conference in the U.S. in 1988; coordinated a year-long project on women and theatre for the Women’s Conference in Beijing; and is co-director of the TV serial “Shakti” on women’s issues. She is a recipient of the Sankriti and Natya Sangh awards, and currently teaches acting at the NSD. This interview was conducted by Erin B. Mee at The National School of Drama in Delhi on August 30, 1996.

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Tell me about some of the projects you have done in which you evolved a script with a particular group.

I did a project with a factory worker’s group. Initially it was a mixed group, both men and women, and they wanted to make a play about working conditions. I didn’t feel that there was a script available, so I evolved a script with them which was about the fear or repulsion in the minds of factory workers when one of them cuts his arm in a machine or dies in an accident at work. It dealt with one night of an experience like this.

How did you develop it?

I used some of the exercises that we had learned at the NSD [where Sharma received her graduate degree in directing] for acting. When going through those exercises as a student I had always felt that the situation could have developed more, and had the situation developed, something could have emerged. So when I was working with this group and didn’t know what to do—I mean how to make a play—I used some of these exercises to develop situations and extend them. It was trial and error, and one of the mistakes I made was to finally write it down.

Why was that a mistake?

Most of the actors couldn’t read, so it was really like taking their own words and making it alien for them, it was terrible. Since then when we have evolved a script I have never gotten down to writing it or having it written—I feel it goes against the whole thing. The other play which was evolved came about when Manushi, a women’s group, asked me to do a workshop with college girls.

What were some of the issues you dealt with in that piece?

This play dealt with the identity or whole feeling of being a woman—of being not exactly discriminated against, but feeling that you were being treated differently, that there were many things you were not allowed to do, of the constant search for confidence, for identity, for friendship, and for being understood. One of the things brought up was Eve-teasing, which was very difficult, because we see it all the time in films and people just laugh at it.

How would you translate the phrase Eve-teasing?

It doesn’t say molestation. It’s when someone comments as you walk by. It’s more the fear, when you are on the road and discover a boy, that something might happen. And it’s the fact that this is a democratic country, and it doesn’t belong to you. That was one scene in which the whole question of vision became very clear to me.

Whose vision?

We realized we were not interested in creating a realistic picture of the scene. What we wanted to convey is what the girl feels: we wanted to bring out the fear, or the feeling of wanting to be invisible—that you...