Collaboration between India and France
CROSSING, a collaboration project between Natya Chetana – India (director: Subodh Patnaik) & Théâtre du Fil, France (artistic leaders: Patrick Navatte & Valerie Delamarre)
Théâtre du Fil from Paris and Community Theatre group Natya Chetana (Theatre for Awareness) from Orissa, India had several exchanges in the past four years. In the framework of the Hong Kong Congress they undertook a two months exchange project on methods of actors training, also orientated towards interdisciplinary and community aspects.
The dream of the collaboration between Théâtre du Fil and Natya Chetana:
We attempted phase - 1, when 7 performers went to India and stayed for a month to do an Indian play under the direction of Subodh having 7 actors from Natya Chetana with them. This play has been created during a collaboration theatre workshop held in 2003. they performed in four different places. They went with a field placement to live in different villages of Orissa and observed the impact of movies and television on the younger generation. So they made a theatre presentation about a girl who gets exploited and even offers her to be exploited without her knowledge. The story explains about the situation of a girl who wants to join in movies.
The phase - 2 was to get Natya Chetana actors to France and do a French play under Patrick’s direction.
Now, the idea as recognised by The Congress Committee is phase - 3, which is to get a third version of the concept where it will be a merge of French and Indian style without carrying any independent identity of a particular style which either Théâtre du Fil or Natya Chetana follows. We realised and appreciated the concept of merging two styles in one theatre expression. We are confident that there is enough scope of scoring the idea in the recent French production “Crossing III”, as the theme of their script is ‘immigration to Europe by third world countries’.
The idea and expectations for Crossing III:
The style which we were looking forward is that: to derive a mode of expression where the audiences will get the theme across and should not be confined within exclusively either the French or the India frame of theatre. The relationship between Natya Chetana and Theatre du Fil has been established since 1998 when Natya Chetana played Indian style of theatre in their theatre-space in Paris. Both the group saw each others performances and started interacting every year. So, there were many steps forward to come to a stage to undertake this collaboration production.
This is the strength we found until now:
• Both are attempting theatre with a process orientation. So the theme, process of creation, empowerment of artists involved on stage, performances for common audiences and preferably for victims of the same subject whom the plays carry are the similar features.
• Théâtre du Fil under Patrick, the artistic Director provides ample scopes for the artists to be empowered and to score own body and mind with a French cultural expression. But Subodh, the artistic director of Natya Chetana is struggling to make the artists free from the traditional way of actors training which is to imitate the director and follow the orders only.
• Natya Chetana plays with the body to make a play visual and play with the mind of the artists to inbuilt emotion. Natya Chetana follows the conventional and traditional approach of a drama with rising action to take the audiences to a climax and improvises the method to adopt contemporary life and stories instead of mythological traditional pieces.
The main areas of collaboration were:
a) Sticking to own mother tongue when using the spoken language of the play
b) Improvising the music of India and France
c) Costume
d) Properties
e) Setting
f) The two different body languages.
Patrick has described that he interestingly discovered the visible action of a refugee not having any job to do in Europe. He had attempted to make a workshop with the players who are also victims of the issue, to know possible activities. He thought it would be exciting and great by facing many discoveries and inventions everyday during the workshop.
So we were looking forward for a fusion of French and Indian expressions and strengths of two theatre styles through one theatre presentation. And a great exchange between two cultures by working together for a common goal. We were anxiously looking forward for a milestone to reach after crossing a long ways of time since 1998 between Théâtre du Fil and Natya Chetana.