(First published by Foreign Policy Journal on Dec 11, 2012 as
'Theater's Moment of Glory in Kathmandu')
Whatever they may pretend or advertise,
the modern cities around the world have one common predicament: they are
just overcrowded. While some have managed the phenomenal rush of people
from the countryside to the cities relatively well, many others have
miserably failed. Particularly in the developing countries, the urban
life could well look like an ordeal when compared with that in the
advanced countries where it is more orderly and manageable. The main
reason for this is that while the people are forced out of their rural
habitats in a massive scale by economic factors, cities are woefully
ill-equipped and unprepared to accommodate all of them. And hence, while
a degree of disorder tends to remain there even in the lives of people
who do reasonably well in the cities, a degree of alienation nearly
always characterizes the lives of those who struggle to make their way
up the prosperity ladder.
Well, this assessment
applies perfectly to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. While many
entrants from outside the valley are likely to feel alien and inferior
in face of the urban extravaganza in the capital, foreigners traveling
to Kathmandu for the first time are more likely to be struck by the
mismanagement visible everywhere earlier than be awed by the natural
beauty and cultural heritage of the valley and the country. When this is
seen in the context of a decade long armed conflict that only ended
years back and the failed attempt to promulgate new constitution over
the period of more than four years since, an ominous overall picture of
Nepal as a state materializes.
That is, however, only one side of the
coin. Amid the chaos at the political stage in Nepal and the striking
degree of disorder and anarchy that flares in the streets of Kathmandu
every few months or years amid the lingering transition period, some
fields of arts and culture have made enormous strides. Significant
numbers of people, fed up of the endless wrangling among the politicians
and the ominous difficulties that have to be faced in everyday life,
have sought solace in theaters where they seek a wide variety of themes
ranging from the reflections of their own lives to the rediscovery of
history to a window to culture of the other people. And frequently the
scope of the theater has been stretched to raise voice about the most
burning political and social issues of the particular moment in history.
And unlike the movie industry, where
concerns of the investors and the commercial viability of the product
have to be considered before delving into the narrative or the message
of the story, there exists a relative freedom in making and performing
small scale plays in theaters, nearly always enabling them to raise the
voice for the oppressed or the dispossessed. Theater can thus perform
several functions at once: entertaining and informing people, helping
them understand cultures of other people inside and outside the country,
and most importantly, raising the voice of the voiceless and helping
the ordinary people to cope with the stress of daily life by providing a
pleasurable distraction from the ordeals.
And on some special occasions, this
accomplishment of theater becomes extraordinary. One such instance is
the recently concluded Kathmandu International Theater Festival. In the
climax of the festival, from December 4 to 6, three outstanding plays
from abroad were performed, each with its own theme. On nostalgia was
the Persian adaptation of the legendary play ‘The lady from the sea’
written originally in Norwegian by Henrik Ibsen. Rewritten by Raoof
Dashti and named ‘Off for some days’, this play was performed by Iranian
artists in Kathmandu, transcending many geographical boundaries and
cultures.
There could be many interpretations of
the play and the message underlying it. But one thing is for sure: it
(to be precise, the Persian adaptation) tries to explore an extremely
common dilemma in the lives of ordinary people. And that dilemma is at
the heart of melancholy of a large number of people who aspire to be
something in life and end up becoming something else. Because of various
events in various circumstances, they just end up leading a life devoid
of satisfaction and full of apathy, regret and constant yearning for
something that is hard to achieve or materialize. The mental illness of
the main character in the play comes to symbolize the ill effects of
this torn nature of lives of people; and of course the number of frankly
mentally ill people only forms the tip of an iceberg made by the large
number of people who fail to cross the socially accepted threshold of
illness.
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