“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts….”
– William Shakespeare.
Nothing describes the stage better than this quote by the Greatest Playwright of English Language and reiterating this today is more significant as it is World Theatre Day.
Each year on this day (the date of the opening of the 1962 “Theatre of Nations” season in Paris), World Theatre Day has been celebrated in many and varied ways by International Theatre Institute (ITI) Centres – of which there are now more than 90 throughout the world. Moreover, theatres, theatre professionals, theatre lovers, theatre universities, academies, and schools celebrate the day as well.
On this occasion, Life Beyond Numbers got in touch with Bengali stage, television, and film actor, playwright, and director Chandan Sen to shed light on theatre, and its present and future.
Sen started acting in Bengali theatre in 1977. He joined the Natya Anan theatre group as a creative director and an actor in 1997. Since then he has acted and directed several plays and performed all over the world. He has also enacted in a number of Bengali films and television serials.
Currently, Chandan Sen is seen as Trilokeshwar Mukherjee aka Bhajan in Star Jalsha’s Khorkuto.
Below is the detailed interview of Sen on this occasion with our team.
Theatre is a medium of performing a play. The mediums have evolved with time. First, it was the radio, then television, and now it’s the web. Does the medium matter while enacting? What is it that sets apart theatre from other mediums?
It depends upon the grammar. You got to know the grammar of each medium. It depends on the distance between the audience and the actor. In other mediums, the audience is not present in proximity. But in theatre, it is a kind of face-off.
You see television is a mix of theatre and films. When it’s about audio, then you need to know about voice projection. Cinema is about frame and lens. In cinema, it has to be more realistic and be more involved. So, it depends upon the medium.
But in all of the above, I believe you have to face the true emotion and evolve it and express it.
It is generally seen that the actors who come from a theatre background perform more impactfully than the rest. So, how does theatre shape an actor? And what’s missing in the films or web series or television?
It’s a little bit controversial. Because whenever you act, you got to act with your soul. Of course, in other mediums, you don’t need to use the entire body because of the lens and frames. But all the way it’s the brain. Because you are depicting the emotion of a different persona and you got to feel it and absorb it with your mind and body and everything.
With training, you can express yourself through your different parts. It can be through your eyes, through your face muscles, or different parts of your body. In theatre, it has to be from your toe to the tip of your hair. So, a well-trained theatre actor can perceive and conceive this whole idea because he has been trained. His whole emotion he can formulate within himself and express.
Why do you think people are losing interest in theatre these days?
I don’t accept this idea because in Kolkata I don’t have the same experience. I have seen three international cities with completely different scenarios as well – New York, Paris, London. It may be happening in other cities. I don’t know.
How is the theatre doing amid the pandemic?
It was tough but in our group Natya Anan, we used to rehearse in zoom. Even we have performed in zoom set up. Whenever we got some time free between the lockdowns, we performed. And now everything is running in full swing.
Pandemic has boosted OTT. And the kind of content that is being made for OTT is more realistic. The theatrics that was needed for stage or even mainstream films are slowly fading. So, is this a mutation that is going to be gradually seen in performances and content in the upcoming days? (As in more raw than idealistic.)
The internet is almost free now. The entertainment will be more personalized in the coming 10 to 15 years and it would be more digitized except for theatre. The idea will be limited to a few people. It is evident and you cannot stop it. It’s the future.
So far we are not having any problems with the political fraternity. They are trying their best to control the subject and overthrowing their ideas through different social and cultural activities. So, that’s why the OTT content is much more raw and realistic, and young people are more interested in realistic dialogues and situations and movements.
At last, I want to say that I still believe that more and more people will come to the theatre because even in most advanced countries, they can watch the football match in their drawing room by wearing 3D specs but still they go to the stadium to watch the match because human beings are social animals. That’s why there is more possibility of people coming to theatres in future.