Theatre of protest, uncensored!

SHE moves about with her arms stretched, with wild hair and in ragged clothes. Delivering her dialogue in a shrill tone, she trails around throwing questions at the crowd that's forming around her. Hold on for a minute longer: what you're witnessing is a dramatic form that's over two centuries old. It's a street theatre Performance in full flow.
It's vocal.It's rustic. It's in your face. It's colourful. It speaks in the distinctive language of the teeming masses. It can't be touched by the pruderies of the censor board. And what's more, it's free! We're talking about the street corner play, commonly called 'nukkad natak' in most of north India.
With no stage, arch lights, make-up and minimum props, the medium of street theatre - also known as the people's theatre - has gained widespread acceptance and popularity in Bihar. Women's groups with financial support from NGOs and government sources have been using the form to spread messages about domestic violence across the state.
Street theatre, an art form with its roots in 1970s left wing activism, has now evolved into a direct marketing tool to take both civic and corporate messages to poor audiences. It is being used today to sell just about everything, from social awareness to sanitary pads. "You can interact with your audience, you can engage them right on and they will get your point. By performing a 30-minute play, if you're engaging fifty people, you're changing fifty people at a time which even an advertisement cannot do," playwright and theatre activist Hasan Imam once told me, while discussing what many of the 'old school' activists call the 'corporatisation of the street play'.
Recognizing the possibilities, corporate giants have jumped on the bandwagon, using street theatre to polish their social responsibility credentials. "In 2012, beer company SABMiller, the makers of Foster's and Peroni beers, funded street plays addressing responsible drinking while Vodafone India trained some employees to perform in public as part of a volunteer programme," recalls Ashutosh, another theatre activist.
This weekend, 14 diehard street theatre troupes have descended on Ravi Bharati in Kurji for the annual All Bihar Theatre Festival, to perform the latest plays from their repertoire. There is biting satire, political commentary, socially relevant messages and a lot of action on the menu as over 150 performers will get down to doing their thing.
"I wonder whether we shall see some really fresh ideas from groups like Hirawal or IPTA or even the students who are trained by Ravi Bharati. The 'old school' seems to be stuck in a groove. It's the same old tirade against 'imperialism' represented by a man in a coat, tie and top-hat and of course coca-cola, Miranda and Bisleri bottled water. The real economic threat is China and cheap stuff that's flooding the markets and snuffing out local production, but there's not a word about that in their plays. I saw a group of trainees, all teenage boys, being made to practice a script which actually used Vietnam as a role model for India for 'kicking out' imperialists. It's pathetic! Instead of having young kids perform positive plays that talk about being good citizens, you reinforce the idea that our country is riddled with corruption," said an observer.
But isn't what street theatre is all about? It's the theatre of protest. The voice for the voiceless. It lays bare the dark underbelly of Indian society that many of us would prefer not to see. And what's more, the censor board can't put a muzzle on it. Yet.