The Bard From Imphal
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November 12, 2006 at 8:04 AM
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Can what happens in a remote corner of India affect the rest of the world? Ratan Thiyam of Imphal, Manipur ensures that it does through the visual texture of his plays, which are both dream and nightmare. The renowned director and his 26-member Chorus Repertory
"I grew up touring with my parents in my childhood - so you can almost say I was born and brought up in costume boxes and green rooms," recalls Thiyam of his childhood with his parents who are noted Manipuri dancers. The difficulties of this nomad existence had determined Thiyam never to enter the performing arts, but somehow the performing arts found him. From working as a writer, he moved into theater, going on to become director of the National School of Drama in Delhi. Later he created his noted repertory company where he expressed the burning issues through performance arts, emphasizing the limited resources and the unrest in his hometown, and by extension, the same griefs and inequities that exist in many parts of the world. As the critic of Frontline put it, " Thiyam's visual spectacles have always been unrivaled. It has epic sweep but also becomes as personal as a sonnet. It billows into a universal lament, and warning."
As he points out, it's about sharing the emotions and the suffering: "Unless you share it together, there will be nobody to think about it. Without a collective vision, without collective thought about peace as our target, it will be far away," he says. "There's a big question mark about what we are leaving behind for future generations. We want to leave them a better, brighter earth and for that we have to work a little bit harder." |
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