Why we do Theatre?

• Honesty

The reason for doing theatre can be different for different people. I believe the first thing which everyone can find  here is honesty! It trains us how to be honest in theatrical time and space. Interestingly when the entire setup is rather fake, the only thing that’s real is how an actor is responding to the situation with honesty. Perhaps that is what makes theatre more real than the real world itself!

I think nothing can gives us pure joy than expressing ourselves with honesty.

• Relationships

Human beings are born with the natural qualities of love, warmth and compassion. But they are conditioned according to the circumstances of their family, education, politics of the region and the country, relationship within their family and society. I feel this conditioning is inevitable, and we all have our own ways to screen, process, and struggle. Theatre makes us understand the psychology of the humans, and we learnt to accept every human being instead of rejecting based on societal clichés. It tells how to relate a quality of a character to his/her past and develop a kind of sympathy for things that we might not have liked about him/her at first.

Theatre can be one path for true love, and compassion for everyone. We all were born with that pure emotion and feeling (the first feeling which we all get it from our mother when we were born to this beautiful world).

• Know the self- yourself

Theatre gives immense opportunity to scan ourselves and explore our deepest sub conscious desires and feelings as we prepare to play a character. It might be tough to few people when they really give that energy and child inside them to that time and space. But in due course to time there would be some changes which are inevitable.

 Our minds thinking for so many unnecessary things are brought to freeze and focus.  This can reveal our true inner self. And that is a beautiful unexplored world is waiting for all of us.

• Time Travel

Theatre allows us to portray characters of gone by centuries unseen future, hence furnishes us (only !) opportunity to  ‘time travel’.

 It’s a fantasy world which we could have only imagined in books, science fiction films, and theories. In theatre we can mentally go back to the past which nobody of us can imagine and can portray character of different ages. The setting of that period is very different – house, clothes, psychology of the human beings, relationship in the family and society, the politics in the region, the ethics of the society, customs, festivals, texture of the skin, the language of the people, and many more. Isn’t this unreal in this real world where we can do actually time travel and become that thing in this real time and space.

Similar, we can imagine going to future where humans might be less human and more robots, surrounded by high tech gadgets, where people might solve mysteries of world but struggle to live happily because machine can’t give joy as humans do. 

So, as a theatre practitioner can imagine and live parallel world time zone characters, and probably we can see ourself crystal clear.

• Discipline, Determination and Dedication

The path of theatre can be an exhausting one. It can be emotionally and physically draining. You have to give yourself fully in that theatrical time and space. There will be instances where you might have difficulties to cope up with certain emotions, you don’t understand why and what is happening inside you, there may be instances when you surprise yourself why we are behaving or acting like this. One has to explore theatre through exercises, activities, or engaging yourself could be any medium. Then read and explore the books on theatre, it will give you a different kind of satisfactory high.

And above all, theatre imbibes in us the most important lesson of life-

“The Show Must Go On….”

Keep Smiling | Team Goodwill