Dalariti Nongpiur on an all-in-one experiment by mass communication students screened earlier this month
ONCE UPON a time in Shillong a group of college students and one of their teachers decided to put up a show. “It has to be contemporary. It needs a social message. It needs to hit the audience. It needs to entertain. A little song and dance, maybe. A fairy tale… Fairy tales are classic shoo-ins,” they must have thought.
That is what they did. They put it all together – these thoughts and ideas – and brought before us The Darkling Resonance – what I can only describe as a theatrical collection of short stories that were put together with the intention to engage the audience in experiencing some of the little tragedies that we come face to face with everyday.
Using the fairy tales that we have all grown up loving, these college freshmen of the Mass Media Department of St. Anthony’s College, Shillong (under the guidance of Rosemary Ishorari, director of The Darkling Resonance) put up a performance that can be seen as the beginning of a serious theatre culture here in the city. The technique was beautiful; the sets and make-up was impeccable; the acting and dialogue delivery was a little weak, but I’d let it pass; the song and dance was upbeat and entertaining (while simultaneously socially relevant).
But at the end of it (the entire performance inclusive of the introductory live installation art and the concluding attempt to involve the audience in the performance), I still felt like there was something missing. I could not put my finger on it. What they had done was taken a few fairy tales and given them entirely new contexts like modern day consumerism, pollution, crime against women, peer and parental pressure (sometimes fatal) that today’s students are often victims of, apathy (be it social, political or personal). While this association had been believably made, I was not entirely satisfied with the experience. I just did not know why. Not that I could think of a better way to spend my Saturday afternoon, but the feeling lingered – this slight distaste of dissatisfaction.
I slept on it and when I woke up the next morning, The Darkling Resonance was, believe it or not, the first thing on my mind. This time though I had the answer. I knew what it was that bugged me about the enactment. How do I put this in one line? Um… it lacked heart. I am not saying that these kids did not put their hearts into it. I am positive that they did. It could be seen in the production value of the entire thing. It was really beautifully executed.
The story, however, did ask for something more. My problem (after having identified it) was that it just mentioned the various issues; they introduced the various problems to the audience and then that’s it. It’s over. If you strip away all the theatrics, all that shall be revealed is a bullet point list of the evils that plagues modern society today. And that just cannot pass as a story (well told or otherwise).
However, upon leaving the auditorium and talking about the performance for a bit, some of us did engage in a serious conversation about child rape. This happened because it (the concept of rape) was a vital part of the show. So in some ways, it did impact me in the way that it was meant to, but that did not last long.
However, I see The Darkling Resonance as very well-intended and as a piece of theatrical art that just about created the right vibration, but that vibration lacked resonance and that resonance, unfortunately, (as can be seen from the title of the enactment) was the heart that I said was missing.
It was like a one night stand – passionate yes, but casual and fleeting.