Theatrework: The Request Concert Project

TH EATREWORK The Request Concert Project Rustom Bharucha "You cannot choose ideas in the hope that they will change you. You must choose conditions of life and of work." -Eugenio Barba Let me share some thoughts with you about an intercultural theatre project that I have been working on for the past two years with the German designer and director, Manuel Lutgenhorst. The project involves the adaptation and staging of a play called Request Concert by Franz Xaver Kroetz in six Asian cities. So far we have completed four productions in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Jakarta. Manuel is presently working on two more productions in Tokyo and Seoul. Request Concert could be described as an act without words that depicts the life of a working woman one particular evening. Silently, she goes through her daily routine as she checks the mail, undresses, smokes a cigarette, watches TV, cooks, eats (while listening to a popular radio program entitled "Request Concert"), goes to the toilet, examines a pimple (which preoccupies her throughout the evening), and eventually settles down to complete a do-it-yourself wall-hanging. This is not a particularly creative task: the woman merely copies a pattern to pass the time. Nonetheless, she is "satisfied" and proceeds to prepare for the next day's work. She places curlers in her hair, sets the alarm clock for 6 a.m., and goes to bed. Unable to sleep, she gets up and takes a sleeping pill. And then ... 26 Without providing any explanations or motivations, Kroetz says that she places the pills in two rows, and begins to swallow them with sips of water. When the water finishes, the woman remembers some wine that she pours into the glass. She continues to swallow the pills with sips of wine. (How can one not suggest a touch of celebration in this gesture?) She waits, then pours more wine into the glass. It spills over and smears the tablecloth. Spontaneously, the woman wipes the stain with the sleeve of her robe. I say "spontaneously" because this might be her only "natural" gesture in the course of the entire play. And then, finally, in her last moment, she "waits quietly and thoughtfully, but presently one can detect a sign of interest in her face." A sign of interest-is that enough for us in India? But I anticipate the problem. In his preface to the play, Kroetz poses a powerful hypothesis: if the "explosive energy" contained in the act of suicide could be directed outwards, against those forces in society which are responsible for the conditions of suicide, we could have a revolutionary situation. Unfortunately, as in the case of Fraulein Rasch, this energy is directed inwards resulting in selfdestruction and the perpetuation of dominant mechanisms in society. In suicide, a potentially positive energy gets negated, liberation is still-born. I must admit that when I first saw the New York production of Request Concert , I did not really think about suicide. What concerned me was the life of the woman in relation to larger societal forces like consumerism and advertising . It was the world of the woman articulated through gestures and silence that remained with me. DOUBTS When I came back to Calcutta, my home city, I wanted very much to do the play with a friend. But just a few discussions convinced me that the play would have to be very different in India, because the conditions of life are so radically different. More specifically, women are perceived very differently in India than in the West. An Indian woman is associated with particular myths, responsibilities, functions, and tensions that are not easily associated with a Fraulein Rasch. "Also, bhaisahib, you forget, we are not so much lonely in India," I am reminded by another friend. It is true, the family is still important in India, and friends continue to drop in for a cup of tea. But I reject the comforting notion that "alienation is a western concept." Particularly in the cities, I see the beginnings of a new anonymity in India, where distances between places are destroying the traditional meeting places and rituals. I see servants with vacant faces uprooted from their...