City-based theatre company to perform without a script

An actor picks up a ball, walks from one point to another across the stage and at the end of the movement, returns to the starting point to begin all over again. Except that in the second loop, another actor enters the stage and shares the space with him, even as they go about doing their individual actions without any overt interaction. The process repeats itself until 25 actors, with 25 distinct actions performed in a loop, create organised chaos as they move through space and time. Do the actions remain at the mechanical level or does something emerge from bodies in a loop?

This exploration forms the premise of The Company Theatre's upcoming debut performance, This Is All There Is When There Is All This. The 60-minute theatrical experience, which will be performed at Prithvi Theatre for six days starting Tuesday, is inspired by acclaimed Polish filmmaker Zbigniew RybczyÅu00c2u0084ski's, Tango, which won an Oscar in the Best Animated Short Film category in 1981. The film depicts an array of characters in a sparsely furnished room with four points of entry and exit, going about their chores. And yet, by the time the room is a full house, the viewer is pulled into the buzz by the strange transformation of the banal into the surreal.

"We began with basic, everyday actions. But when 25 people started walking on the stage in different directions, at different speeds and rhythms, it started making amazing theatrical sense without actually telling any particular story through a narrative or written script. In fact, the actions became the script," says noted theatre actor-director Atul Kumar, who is one of the actors in the interestingly titled performance, which itself has the connotation of a loop. Everyday objects like doors, a stack of newspapers, lock and key and stethoscope are some of the props used in the performance, which took over a month of intensive rehearsals to come together.

Being part of a piece stripped off a script was akin to unlearning, deconstructing and then rebuilding a concept. "As actors, our immediate reaction is to look for stories behind an action. Shakespeare, for instance, had a concrete script to his plays that you cannot mess around with. There's a meter, rhyme and breath pattern woven into his writing. The idea was to bring that kind of precision to a physical script; a script for your muscles," explains performer, director and award-winning lighting designer Sujay Saple, who has directed the performance with Rachel D'Souza.

A creative for the performance

The actors, many of who have a background in a variety of dance forms - including Kumar, who is trained in kathakali and kalaripayattu - have brought their experience to the stage. "We started with exploring and experimenting freely in space, but later because of the permutations and combinations and the choices that actors made, we slowly moved towards a specific structure and fixed choreography. Because we are working in the idea of a loop, we need to be absolutely identical in every loop. Even raising a finger, which is not part of a previous loop, has a domino effect," says Kumar.

Sujay Saple and Atul Kumar

So, what emerged from this dynamic of bodily movements? "After the point where the actions become mechanical, they evolve into a heightened state, which allows actors to explore an emotional landscape as opposed to imposing emotions on the performance," says Saple. To further explain his point, he says, "The body is political. You cannot take that away. If I tell an actor to take a position in an empty space, where will he stand? Bang in the centre, in a corner, facing the audience, or turning his back to them? This is all part of an actor's choice."

Adds Kumar, "Like in most abstract art forms, consciously or unconsciously, certain movements start depicting the mental space and personal history of the actor, and the times he lives in. Feeling extreme pain and pathos, jubilant, wronged or violated are emotions we all go through, and when those emotions are evoked, not by a specific script but just by [tacit] interaction with others in the same space, through a shared glance for instance, imagine how powerful that can be."

Saple points out that in these times, it's impossible to create an apolitical act. "We are living in frightening and difficult times, so the collective anxiety about where we are headed reflects in the performance," he says. For the audience, the mix of familiar and unfamiliar, and being able to relate to some of the actors would be an interesting experience. "We begin to notice the little details, and invest in what we are watching," Saple adds.

With lines merging and art forms becoming collaborative, both Saple and Kumar feel that the time to label a performance as a play or dance is long gone. The scope for such experimental pieces in Mumbai, feels Kumar, is opening up because a lot of young people are doing immersive theatre and site-specific work, and generating new audiences.

"All of us, especially in a city like Bombay, are stuck in a loop, in a rut, which may be domestic or commercial or personal. We live in loops and we keep changing through that," Saple says. "When you watch that on the stage in a condensed form, it does something to you."

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