Trust Vinay Sharma and Padatik, one of the most famous theatre groups in Kolkata not only to challenge the very definition of “theatre” as we understand it but also to recreate performances that challenge its confused audience to try and understand what exactly is going on in the performance space and what are the characters up to.
The Audition is the name of the play by Thomas B. Hubschman whose name I heard for the first time. Pardon my ignorance or the sad fact that I never majored in literature in college.
According to Wikipedia, “an audition is a sample performance by an actor, singer, musician, dancer or other performer. It typically involves the performer displaying his/her talent.”
The few members of the audience for this play began at a disadvantage because the performance space or “stage” was suddenly created impromptu as the original proscenium was being renovated. So, we were cramped in any corner that could accommodate us and the latecomers sat on rapidly drawn out chairs placed against the narrow door.
So, this was an impromptu space ‘cooked up’ at the last minute challenging Vinay Sharma and his two actors to adjust hurriedly to this new situation. But the space continued to get cramped as more and more theatre lovers stepped in.
Imagine the challenge this might have thrown up to the two very young actors, namely, Avishek Moulik who plays the casting director and Rupsha Bhattacharjee who plays Madhabi D’Souza, the young would-be actress who has come for the audition.
They begin with fireworks and the young girl vacillates between and among fear, nervousness and diffidence but soon wins over her situation till you never get to know who is the would-be actor and who is the casting director. Their relationship over the 70-minutes of the play keeps vacillating constantly between power and the lack of it and one is never quite sure where the play is heading towards. Will the actor get the part she has come to audition for? Will the casting director give her the green signal?
Then, as the two young actors use their entire body across the props set up in the form of two white ply board partitions with the girl often disappearing into the washroom perhaps to buy time or gather confidence or just to relieve herself is very uncertain. Then, as the actors keep moving on, through dialogue, changes in their vocal reflexes, body movements, you get to realise that this is no audition. This is a slice of life in miniature presented to us in the form of a performance.
The performance space is as claustrophobic as is their life at that very moment, trapped, as it were, in a given time and space they now cannot come out of. Sometimes, you get the distinct impression that their roles are reversed, that is, perhaps the casting director is quite unsure of himself and the girl is more confident than she appears to be. But everything seems to be in a state of flux, unsettled in terms of time, space and relationship between the young casting director and the girl with stardust in her eyes, perhaps?
According to the director, trainer and current artistic director Vinay Sharma, “The Audition is dialogue between an established casting director and a young, inexperienced actress who find themselves temporarily cut off from the world beyond the stage they are standing on. That world has somehow ceased to exist. It is a tale of regret and lost love but also a story of hope. The play is a coming together of two human beings in a world that is, literally, what we make of it.”
Thomas B. Hubschman is a freelance writer and editor based in New York City. He has published several novels such as Look At Me Now, Father Walther’s Temptation, My Boss, Song of the Mockingbird and Billy Boy plus a collection of short stories and three science fiction novels including short stories, articles and reviews.
It would be in the fitness of things to quote from his long article, Why Fiction? Where he writes: “Each new poem or short story is an attempt to change the world, not morally, but imaginatively. That's because we live almost exclusively out of our imaginations. We live, in fact, by faith, faith in our senses and our brains which create the models we call reality. Our art-making is just an extension of the process by which we negotiate that reality every minute we are alive, creating personal stories of our own to do so, ordinary narratives about looking both ways when we cross the street or recounting what happened that day at work.”
Bravo Vinayji, Padatik and your brand of bold and dedicated actors,for this wonderful performance.