THE SUBCONSCIOUS SHAKESPEARE : 1300 Shakespeares in the Subconscious of a Democracy within a Continuum that is India

THE SUBCONSCIOUS SHAKESPEARE 

1300 Shakespeares in the Subconscious of a 

Democracy within a Continuum that is India ___________________________________________________________________________________The paper hangs by the theory that WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE did not write consciously, not for the book trade, nor for the universities, and surely never consciously for India . In his subconscious was always the STAGE, which makes him a writer of a special kind of fiction, with a unique quill, and it is through the STAGE that India must connect with him. CONFLICT BEING THE ESSENCE OF DRAMA,THE STAGE THUS BECOMES THE SUBCONSCIOUS FLASH POINT OF OUR TWO IMAGINATIONS, TWO CIVILIZATIONS, TWO THEATRES OF CREATIVE "WAR", TWO AUDIENCES! This is the peg, or hook, as we call it in advertising language, that will hold up the future of the Shakespeare story in India. Ergo, our time would have been better served if we were together engaged in staging Shakespeare's plays TO MAKE PAPERS LIKE THIS QUITE REDUNDANT! ___________________________________________________________________________________ When it comes to the Stage, most everything - subconscious and conscious - is conveyed through CHARACTERS , revealed through what this paper calls in a portmanteau, "CHARACTOR", a character played by an actor. A theatre person may have no choice but to invest all, infuse his or her everything, entire self into the creation of this charitra - a combo of charita, action, behavior, in the life of, and chitra, picture, visual, a face, body, but s/he will have no control of who will play that character, be that charitra, in which place, playing to whom! Language, in this context, verbal in step with the non-verbal, takes on a completely new meaning, puts on a totally unique "character" working not as a stand-alone tool, as text in a novel, but as a weapon in an arsenal, a member of a communication ensemble - a good deal of its power ensuing from saying what cannot be otherwise stated. Close study of Shakespeare's 1300 or so character inventions - how they talk and what they are about as they talk contextually (as opposed to merely what they say textually) - is critical to the understanding of the vast oceanic subconscious of the bard as he dipped into it to create durable, memorable and merry parts of his skillfully disguised self.. Dogberry and Donalbain, the Porter and the Portias are all theatrically well constructed Shakespeares who smell as sweet but by another name! That the characters fit with such authenticity our actors of today and sit palpably and comfortably on their shoulders is testimony to Shakespeare's robust melding and molding, arranging and rearranging such elements in his subconscious as to fetch him immediate purchase but also to leave them to us flexible and plastic, to arrange and rearrange them to our needs, in far away shores, that'd have been beyond Shakespeare's wildest dreams. 

 A STORY OF LANGUAGE 

Language is not so much about the external communication of our thoughts as it is for arranging and rearranging our subconscious to build that thought that we eventually express, or not! - This is a Noam Chomsky derivative, not a quote. This is simply a way of saying that humans, by nature, are given to cogitation and reverie, inner conflict and internal questioning, self-evaluation, conscientious appraisal and reappraisal, nostalgia, intuitive and instinctive impulses, feelings unspeakable , emotions unexpressed, bias and prejudice stifled within, desires suppressed and repressed, imagination leashed, gagged and bound, maimed and crippled, struggling for release, wanting to get out..driving us to mumble and mutter, twitch and blanche, chatter away, not to others, but incessantly to our very own selves..in a syntax that is peculiar to each one of us.. i am purposely not using, not yet, words such as soliloquy, aside, equivocation - saying one thing to others that means quite another to oneself - which are all dramatic rearrangements of our subconscious for a specific audience with apparently cathartic and, in comedy, rasa potentialities! ( If never before, the last 2 years must surely have helped us somewhat to get in touch with ourselves, there being small chance of conscious escape from the inner being during a partial or a total external lockdown. This would have been the toughest part for those who survived the pandemic: facing one's own self! With nary a mall nor a cinema hall to distract us..)

 SELF-TALK & 

PERSONALITY PROJECTION 

Much of this "talking to oneself" - what we say to ourselves - is difficult to capture, fleeting as it is and inexorably lost on its way up from deep down inside to the world outside. "If only we could capture fully our subconscious", is a primary lament, "and make it intelligible to others", is the secondary concern! Of the many tools available to mankind , and as a brand researcher i could name a string of tactics that can draw a person or a community out, fiction is perhaps humanity's longest standing and most desperate bid to make our unique terminology, our individual voice intelligible to the collective, in however limited a way. We make up stories, we create characters...If we were to talk, ourselves, not in the voice but character of Othello one day and Iago or Desdemona on the other, we'd be considered mad..but the fact is we could...our creative capacities, fuelled by our deep longing, would allow us to be many different, not just human objects, but plant and animal creatures, too, with a thread - sutradhaar-like - connecting and holding our acts together ! The performing arts, particularly theatre, thrives on this peculiar presentation and representation of the subconscious! Not just by voice language but by body language ,too, and a combination of the two, language being woefully inadequate and always behind the experience! India civilization, it is rumored, has 33 million gods. Each with a finely differentiated characteristic from the other. So, what will you be today, or this afternoon, or tonight? Which is another way of asking, how many hands, or heads or look or posture or story variation or "positioning" do you fancy will touch your subconscious this morning, afternoon or night, depending on when you wish to pray, and where, or go to the theatre, when? Which god will draw you out ,which character draw you in? How immersive will your experience be, with what intensity your merger? 

TRADING LIVES WITH STANGERS ON A TRAIN 

OR A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE 

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is", asserts Albert Camus, in his introduction to "The Rebel", acknowledging in a way humanity's deep subconscious desire to be where and what he is not! Theatre becomes ,therefore, a trans-portation vehicle, with a return ticket.. you can be one of the characters you are watching and return to your boring old self. This, of course, should not be an excuse for the current box office to double entry prices! Adding an exit price, too!! (Human history is replete with stories of people who willingly or unwillingly entered the chakravyuh, but simply could not, would not, dare not let go..Blanche DuBois is a huge creation in that direction . Her true to god confession, "i have always DEPENDED on the kindness of strangers" is replete with layers and layers of meaning..Who knows what "stranger" within you or without would get to be so attractive, so magnetic, as to possess you!) How strange it must have been for Jessica Lange, the actor, to walk into the dark furry furious KING KONG territory! Was it the same as her Blanche stepping into Stanley's working-class terror-story in the DEPRESSION? Imagine the strangeness of 1300 characters born in an English city in the 16th/17th century washed ashore on a strange land in the mid-1700's desperately seeking an audience.. fearful that if they didn't find one they would simply vanish into thin air, or be fiercely thrust back into the crowded cloistered attic of Shakespeare's sub-conscious, who was by then dead for about 150 years! How long, then, before Viola found Vasantsena to ask her if she violated a social code by kicking a man, lady-unlike, in a park, even if the guy was a villain, owning a bullock-driven chariot that snorted like an old hog as it rolled? Did Iago congratulate Shakara for plotting to murder a noble lady, having himself successfully destroyed one in Venice? Or was he achhut, untouchable, for a raja ka sala? Was Ganymede beholden to the Lady of Avanti for consenting to share her marital bed with Queen Padmavati? Did Lady Tongue have a chat with Lady Upanishad? And were Rosencratz and Guildenstern embarrassed to meet two truly devoted lady companions Sharangarava and Sharadwata? And who knows where they met? Began to co-habit and live with each other? In the subconscious? Whose subconscious was it or is it anyway? 

FICTIONARIUM 

i run a modest program called the "FICTIONARIUM" , which mimics the standard aquarium where you occasionally let yourself go to experience the fish without wetting your toes..Ergo, in the FICTIONARIUM you can experience your fictional emotional life, choose to become another, some one other, turn into any of the characters, in any situation of your choosing, set out on the "menu" on the particular day or night of your visit. This is not very different from the fiction writer, the "fictioner", particularly the dramatist, who picks and chooses bits and pieces of reality, ARRANGES THEM IN AN ORDER OR DISORDER OF HIS OWN LIKING and welcomes you to participate in his "creation", OR "RE-CREATION" , IF YOU LIKE, THAT WE CALL ENTERTAINMENT, that is aka, appropriately, RECREATION! To catharsise or RE- BALANCE rasa-wise! ( A favorite movie of mine is Paul Veerhoven's Arnold Schwarzenegger starrer, TOTAL RECALL. I think Arnold Douglas Schwarzenegger Quaid returns from Mars, refreshed, to become Governor of California!) Nobody understood this (subconscious) creative truth better than William Shakespeare. And while we know nothing or little of this man's working style, early life and initiation into theatre - as he slayed calf, poached deer and rabbits and held horses outside a playhouse, reportedly - we know for sure there are at least 1300 of him proliferating among us, within us, deep in our subconscious...to choose from...identify with...become...without losing our sanity, in fact, find our identity, in his fiction, his FICTIONARIUM! ( i am not going to enter into a discussion here on methods of acting - Stanislavskian or Brechtian, but try to give you a taste of the Shakespearean..what i call "THE 20 STAGES" of the SHAKESPEAREAN FICTIONARIUM, allowing all puns to "PLAY" on the word "STAGE"!) ALPHA-NUMERICAL SKILLSET Why do i say "at least" 1300? Why set a minimum? All you need is a character headcount, and you could be accurate to the last genie in the Shakespearean bottle, or rubbing oil lamp..and when i did last add them up, they counted to 1300...But is the subconscious truly up for an arithmetical count..?? Apparently, the Elizabethan school Shakespeare attended when he was 7 years old, all the way up to age 15, excluded mathematics from its curriculum! It's a wonder the boy actually grew up to be financially sound, making considerable money out of what must be considered a 3-penny theatre, not opera, one for Groundlings, two for Gallery, three for Box, ending up owning a rare 10% of the theatre company he wrote and acted in, when no other Elizabethan dramatist is known to have been entitled to a profit- share in any playhouse. No surprises that Shakespeare's beds - the second best that he willed to his wife Anne Hathaway and the best, which is purported to be the guest-bed that perhaps went to his children - are of great debate and controversy even today..Those beds must have been where he dreamt up his theatre, of course, but where he may also have sharpened his negotiable instruments, too! (Pun?) Incidentally, Shakespeare also dreamt up the word "BEDROOM" . Imagine what a disaster it'd have been if the East India Company had colonized India before Shakespeare..the Brits wouldn't have known where to sleep in this country, or theirs..and would simply have died of insomnia despite having courageously survived the terrible mosquitoes of swampy Calcutta! Besides the word "bedroom", incredible Shakespeare plucked over 17,000 words out of the mouths, nay subconscious, of the Elizabethan community that find resonance, most, if not all, of them, in our consciousness today!

 STRETCHING 1300 TO 500,000 "CHARACTORS" 

But returning to "at least 1300". In the interaction or should i say trinteraction, i.e. the triangulated interweave of the subconscious of the creator, the character and the customer - which is a way of calling theatre-going audiences spread over 400 years - you could technically and imaginatively generate over 500,000 character-actor combos - call them CHARACTORS - contextually variegated, but originated, nevertheless, in the smithy of the Shakespearean subconscious milieu! (What, after all, is a character without an actor to put action and life into the charitra, provide a face , a chitra, to the charita of the character? And every actor brings to the character not just a new face but a new representation, new interpretation of the chitra, the charita, the charitra, redefining the subconscious anew, all over again!) If you don't believe me , try answering the question: why should Cumberbatch's HAMLET be the same as Garrick's? Apparently activist Paul Robeson's OTHELLO with a multi-racial cast and a Puerto Rican Iago ran for 300 nights or thereabouts...how would you like to produce the play each night with a different colored lead? Say a Chinese Othello and Ukrainian Brabantio, one night? SOURCE MATERIAL & IMMATERIAL Incidentally, the BRABANTIO charitra, (Braban-she-oh or Bray-ban-tee-o or Brah-ban-zee-o? Tomayto, Tomahto...) pronounce it whichever way you like, has no counterpart in Shakespeare's source material for the play OTHELLO but is apparently the bards complete invention.. It is Shakespeare, not his source, nor Desdemona nor Othello, that needed a father to berate an erring daughter rumored to being "moor-tupped" and there is no reliable source material to evidence exactly what did Anne Hathaway's dad say to Shakespeare when he found out that our bard-yet-to-be had knocked up his dear girl? Fact is, he didn't find out ..he was about a year dead by the time Anne married Shakespeare, due to, what may be considered today, extenuating circumstances. So, just what persuaded Shakespeare to "invent" a berating Brabantio daddy in the absence of any recorded opprobrium a la Richard Hathaway? What, then, were Shakespeare's subconscious sources? (Related query : Why would jealousy personified Robert the Greene-eyed monster refer to a certain scene-Shaker as an upstart "crow"? Should there have been no skin-color (p)references here, Shakespeare wouldn't have "experienced" racism naturally..So, did he "experience" it in his "emotional subconscious"? Did it come to him - well, subconsciously? Why? How? ) What, then, is this thing called "source material"? In Shakespeare it is evidently "source IMmaterial"- just some conscious gibberish to fire-trigger his true source..the subconscious...and he ours...(Incidentally, with social media proliferating in our time and age, just how much of the "subconscious" do we find in our, so called, modern "reliable" sources? Why, then, blame Shakespeare?) 

 (ASIDE) A LIKELY CONVERSATION 

Here's a pre-marital dramatic moment of source immaterial found in an immaculate archive - the community storehouse of subconscious precipitate - etched partially on parchment and partially on palm leaf : 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE : What is this? 

ANNE HATHAWAY : (Aside) This indeed is becoming hot as burning fire 

ANNE'S SISTER : Why do you say that, William? Oughtn't you to know the ways of the world as well as any other? A young woman, with a living husband, would be suspected by others if she stays (resides) in her parent's house. She is suspected even if she remains virtuous. That is why whether she is liked by her husband or not, her relatives would rather leave her with him. 

SHAKESPEARE : WHAT? HAVE I MARRIED THIS LADY? 

ANNE HATHAWAY: (Dejectedly, to herself) Rightly indeed was my heart apprehensive 

ANNE'S SISTER : Is it right for a man to disown what he has done to show a dislike for his sense of duty ? 

SHAKESPEARE: What an unfair question! 

ANNE'S SISTER : Apparently, your mad-virility makes you behave like that 

SHAKESPEARE: This is a deliberate insult 

ANNE'S MOTHER : Daughter, give up bashfulness for a moment . Let me remove the veil. Then your husband will recognize you(Does so) 

SHAKESPEARE: (Staring at Anne, to himself) What an unspoiled beauty! It is just being dropped into my lap -- and here i am doubting whether i married her or not. i am like a bee which is attracted to a lotus covered with dew drops. i cannot give her up nor can i accept her .(Sits in a hesitant mood) SHAKESPEARE'S FRIEND: What high regard for righteousness! Would anybody else have wasted one thought over it when such a beauty was offered so easili? 

ANNE'S SISTER : Why are you silent, oh William? 

SHAKESPEARE : O, my venerable Gods, in spite of my efforts i am unable to remember my marriage to this lady. How can i then accept her, particularly when i doubt if i am the father of the child that will be born to her? 

ANNE'S SISTER: Don't go that far. Do you know you are showing disrespect to the dead father who condoned your outrage on his daughter? Do you know you are like a thief whom the kind householder is letting off along with the stolen property? 

FICTION STUDIES 

 Fiction can come from any direction - PAST,PRESENT,FUTURE - and simply abounds in our daily lives. This is good reason to elevate what we call LITERATURE STUDIES in our schools, colleges, universities to its genuine status by calling it by its true name : FICTION STUDIES or STUDIES IN FICTION, if you prefer, thereby differentiating such LEARNINGS, such EDUCATION, from everything else that we study, that can be broadly categorized as FACT STUDIES. Facts, whether in history, economics, political science or the quantifiable sciences, for that matter, are proved established entities and, therefore, belong to the past. There can be no "fact" as to what will happen tomorrow or what would have happened if facts, as we know them, as already established, had been arranged or rearranged in ways that we had dreamt of, subconsciously desired . Or, what would happen, if we selected specific bits and pieces of reality and reorganized them in factually unimaginable ways. That would be the work of "fiction", of what could be, of what could have been, the future, or in the future, the possible impossibilities, forged by the "fictioner"! It is the genius subconscious of William Shakespeare that in 37 theatrical works - that are neither taught in history classes, nor in political science , nor as economics - he has been able to keep audiences over 400 years enthralled with his possible impossibilities..and our admiration for his fantasies has not waned in our subconscious estimation of what exactly is he saying, which is both a question and an exclamation mark! 

 SACRED & PROFANE 

If his 1300 characters were to be played every year by a set of fresh actors, no duplication, we would need over 5 lakh character-actors , that i call "CHARACTORS" in a portmanteau of my creation, to trod the stage over 400 years. You can do the math but what is statistically a fact may be an impossible possibility, an unsustainable fiction! To sustain, then, our love for this theatre person we could fall back on what i consider a promiscuity deep inside our subconscious that finds inadvertent and/or planned expression in the performing arts, for functional/economic/administrative purposes. In a world that is desperately seeking monogamy we could squeeze 1300 characters to be played by 50 artistes, thereby allowing ourselves and our audiences watch, say, an Olivia Hussey ( 17 year-old Juliet in Franco Zefferelli's 1968 "R&J") make love to several men in various productions playing Romeo, Antony, Benedick, Bossanio, Hamlet, Orlando, Duke Orsino, to her Juliet, Cleopatra, Beatrice, Portia, Rosalind, Viola. Or vice versa, the pun on vice only partially intended. But, of course, only if s/he has the range. Is it, therefore, not a deeply desired irony embedded in the subconscious of a community that it should keep up a Sita who might swear allegiance to one man after another from one performance night to the next performance night, all portraying a slightly differentiated version of the stature and grandeur of her maryada purushottam Rama? There is no accounting for how many of us will be, will identify with which Ram that the epic urges us to become, being and becoming being the story of most Shakespearean plays. i am here deliberately mixing up the religious and the secular, the pure and the profane, which is how societies, communities, civilizations have always desired it, that theatre audiences have freely given expression to, kept alive ! Sublimating the vulgar and making commonplace the sublime.. 

SHAKESPEARE AUDIENCE 

Plays leave behind texts - not necessarily in folios and quartos, not necessarily supervised by the playwright - for future ages to judge. Audiences - for whom these texts are published, these plays performed, the fiction mounted - leave few traces behind. Once the performance is over, the "curtain" , the yavanika, the tiraskarini, comes down, they simply melt into the multitudinous masses they emerged from.. In Shakespeare's London an audience of about 1250 meant the play was, on the average, a success. A hit would draw two times as big an audience and fill the theatre to near capacity of 3000. This was at the turn of the century 16th to 17th. Let me remind our audience here that as of the turn of the century 20th to 21st, and even to this day, i believe, there is no theatre in all of India that has a capacity of 3000! Wiliam Shakespeare never came to India, but when ship loads of his subconscious representatives - 1300 of them - began to trickle into this country in the mid-18th century it is very unlikely they stood up in grand IPL sized stadiums and screamed into megaphones under halogens and over footlights , "To be here, or not to be here, Now, is that a question?" Chances are they had small private audiences , performing in shows that could be ordered at home for 10-20 pounds. (The last time i had an audience of 80-100,000 was back in 1988 when i organized the BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SHOW , with SPRINGSTEEN,GORDON "STING" SUMNER,PETER GABRIEL,TRACY CHAPMAN and YOUSSOU ENDOUR, at the Jawharlal Nehru Stadium..but that was a music concert ...first one that gargantuan in the history of India...so, it doesn't count as a theatre audience) Returning to our theatre, what occurs within the minds and hearts - subconscious, if you like - of thousands of men and women as they watch, experience a play, is not casually revealed. Audiences are difficult to appraise, as difficult as it is to appraise the human race, because audiences with their myriad angularities, are representatives of the human race! What part the audience played in the creation of Shakespeare's characters and plays , whether Shakespeare wrote as he did because of the nature of his audience - and which audience , everyday folk, royalty, craftsmen ? - or in spite of them or both is a question that touches the core of the dramatic arts. Textual analysis alone and that too today, in classrooms and seminars , both in a lockdown, in a strange country, where monarchy actually failed to deliver, and democracy is struggling within a civilizational continuum, can hardly reveal more than 10% of the bard. His true worth would emerge if we let him run, let him play, let his characters and our actors massage our subconscious... I have two slogans to kick off the campaign...two slogans that run alongside each other. The first is a corporate strategic objective statement, with no apologies to Commander Sade's "Your Love is KIng", it goes : 

 LET'S MAKE SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS "KING", TO CATCH THE CONSCIENCE OF THIS AUDIENCE THING... 

The other is a brand promotion banner-line: 

ROUND THE YEAR, SHAKESPEARE ! 

A play in Shakespeare's times was a success if it had 12 shows on the average. Shakespeare did not write for the book-trade, nor did he write for university professors and college students..definitely not for us in India..He wrote solely for a theatre audience, his theatre audience and his plays made about 8 pounds per show. At 100 pounds over 12 shows he was an averagely happy theatre man. But when his plays ran for 32 nights, sorry days - because plays during his time were performed after 2 p.m. in the afternoon, in broad daylight, and never after 7/8 p.m., and a Shakespeare play was often durable enough to last all days in an entire month - it fetched over 250 pounds, making our bard a wildly successful theatre bird! The corresponding time-line in India would be 9 a.m. IST to 2 p.m. IST, about the perfect time for one Shakespeare to run for schools, colleges, educational institutions of engineering, management, law, commerce, accountancy, et al, for 10 days in a year with the potential of performing all 37 Shakespeares back to back annually for a potential audience of one million students per day! There are about 300 million students in India enrolled in schools and in higher education and 20% of them are most likely to return for a second look at a Shakespeare play performed with the contemporized intensity that Shakespeare truly deserves! Quite literally, we could run all of Shakespeare in a single year and return to better them the next year, creating a "ROUND THE YEAR SHAKESPEARE" movement while giving the concept "THEATRE - IN - THE - ROUND" a totally new, and well deserved, meaning! I can guess what's on your mind..if not top-of-mind surely deep in your incredulous sub-conscious..Is it a risk worth taking...?? And my knee-jerk reaction to that is, if there is one thing we learn from the commerce of theatre and the remarkable success of England as the world's greatest colonial power - and the two may be connected - is her invention and launch of the joint stock company..trading on the high seas and treading the boards in a TEMPESTuous adventure..so much risked, and so much gained.. 

JOINT STOCK COMPANY OR CROWD SOURCING 

Consider this! If our PERFORMANCE VIEWING TICKET (P.V.T.) pricing (and not P.V.R. pricing) was one measly pound a ticket per year, a mere quid, and the quid pro quo was Rs. 100/- then a Shakespeare ROUND-THE-YEAR Performance Company performing Shakespeare round the year with 50 actor members, each playing say 25 Shakespearean characters annually, and promiscuously as we established earlier, to bring 1300 Shakespeare's to life, with a support staff of another 50, in a 1:1 ratio, would each one of them go laughing to the bank with a monthly income of Rs. 3 crores! So, the 36 crore rupees question is : how would you, dear teachers, lecturers, students of Shakespeare, professing knowledge of Shakespeare without the experience, like to abandon your teaching, lecturing, reading, professoring of Shakespeare to become performers, actors, stage hands, designers, scenographers, contemporizers, of Shakespeare and earn Rs. 36 crores a year, minus tax deducted at source, to genuinely discover for yourself and truly help audiences to discover the 1300 Shakespeares hidden in us, in our subconscious? But subconscious fears are not easily banished with an, "Avaunt , and quit my sight!", nor with a, "Why, so; being gone, "I am a man again - " We worry if we will get this audience ...who will watch Shakespeare? And why? Even if it is for a couple of hours in an entire year...see what?

  CONDITIONED REFLEX AND FREUDIAN SLIP 

The theatre is a magical place and the magic begins long before you enter the auditorium! To Peter Brooks, the greatest living theatre person to have interpreted Shakespeare on the modern stage, the silent crossing of a single human figure walking across an empty space is excitable enough to be called theatre. Theatre vocabulary stripped of language is his forte and a combination of Jerzy Grotowski's "poor theatre" and his own resultant original "rough theatre" demand that the "poor bare forked animal" actor-body must connect with the sub-conscious of the audience, without the interference or intervention of prop or set, costume or make-up, even before Edgar or Tom has uttered a single word, or a single word has been uttered to him. Is it possible then , for non-verbal communication, to evoke or subdue "smells" in the auditorium - an objective co-relative that T.S.Eliot may have dramatically sung about - "sawdust restaurants and oyster shells" - but not dreamt of in drama! Just how did William Shakespeare transport a milling crowd of sweaty laborers parboiled in the afternoon sun generally given to gambling bearbaiting drinking and whoring, smelling of ale, herring and onions ,to a pristine world of courts and courtship, aristocratic sophistication, kings and queens, dukes and duchess, misty romance, and spiritual awakening, even as he keeps them grounded in reality, acknowledging their vulgarity, unembarrassed by the bawdry? Intertwining and running parallel but never confusing what he is seriously about with its very own travesty, concocted by his very own self? What charm, what spell, does the theatre cast on the audience, whether in an "o" or some other shape, whether wooden or of brick and mortar, whether streamed and cast by click and portal? Is the spell Pavlovian? What bell triggers your salivation for the dramatic? Long before you enter the theatre premises at the time of booking a ticket your mind is subconsciously preparing for an evening of magical fiction..expecting to be drawn into an experience that will draw you out...dissolve the floors of your consciousness..suspend disbelief..bathed in light, as though pouring in through stained glass windows and multi-colored skylights, blur your harsh rationality. At a production of "Mother Courage", in the gym at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, the director installed at the entrance a traditional cash register, one of those old old machines, known for its iconic “ka-ching” sound, for seemingly and visually no purpose at all. Tickets had been bought in advance and there was no cash transaction at the entry gate. But he had a stage hand check your ticket and go ka- ching on the register before letting you in. After about 150 ka-ching ka-ching ka-chings when the gym was full and the audience seated along the walls, stacked on top of each other as in a gallery, on bunk bed mattresses, the play opened ...and every time the actor playing Mother Courage made a financial transaction in the play or anyone else did a negotiation or money deal, "ka-ching" would go the machine, reminding all not to ignore the money motive of war that destroys, little by little ka-ching by ka-ching, ironically a "mother's" family that the "mother" actually tries to protect from the war that she makes money out of, ka-ching! 

THEATRE VOCABULARY & LANGUAGE  

Theatre vocabulary not tied to language is fascinating, but language itself can make unintended sounds in an open theatre, that you, perhaps, did intend..Macduff to many would sound Macdove, the gentle- hearted family loving simple-minded loyalist who goes to war with the noble intention to return peace to his blighted land..make dove again..against a backdrop of his butchered family! Then there is Banquo who believes he has an entire lineage of kings in the Banque Banquiz Banca Bank - is he the moneyed thane that financed the war? - who is Benched and unbenched at the Banquo-ate, actually the Banquet where he didn't! There is a long spell of drunkenness that Drunken, sorry Duncan, signals that is impossible to get over once he flags off the festivities that go re-past, sorry past the heat oppressed brain to his murder and blood smearing as if in a pagan ceremonial ritual, post the inebriated teeter-totter Peter-Porter incantation, the dizzy mental confusion of death discovery, the swooning lady look, reports of nature in unnatural sway, animal, plant and human kingdoms in disarray, all the way down to an assassinated Barmy-cide feast of food and wine that no one can taste devastated as the Banquo-et is by the partial sighting by and of only one actor but in full view of the audience of a ghost in ghoulish debilitation.. Shakespeare can literally make you smell the liquor fumes and blood droplets hanging heavily in the air..opening up gradually, streaming steadily, starting with a public hanging in the open in Act 1, Sc.4 to a concealed murder in private in Act 3, Sc.4 and a daggered hang over in between..Creating just the right platform for a re-entry of the Witches, pausing just a moment to sum up the proceedings for a stunned audience in tones so cynical that it can only come from a thoroughly disillusioned youth, sarcasm , like blood, dripping from his every word.. Talk of mood management, what this seminar calls the "subconscious"! It is an absolute genius at work that can cut with such remarkable editing efficiency not for textual reading , because then the atmospherics go missing, but for a viewing audience enthralled by an artist-editor who it has been impossible to find even in modern film noir, let alone modern advertising. How does he do it, 

STEAL YOUR MIND? How did he invent this, DOMINATE YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS? CUTTING BETWEEN CARVING MEAT AND CUTTING PEOPLE, INTERSPERSING MURDER WITH CELEBRATION, CHOPPING LAMB AT THE DINING TABLE IN THE MIDST OF SENDING LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER.

.it would take 400 years for a mafia in Coppola's GODFATHER, a war in Joseph Heller's CATCH 22 to revive a genre where victuals turn into victims in your mouth..and, lo behold, victims turn into victuals! In Bhasa's Madhyama Vyayoga is described an episode of demon character Ghatotkacha - that Shakespeare's 1300 may have met when they arrived in India. Embarking on a search of a 'middle' (madhyama) Brahmin to serve up as food for his mother to enable her to break her fast, he wanders about the forest shouting , "Oh middle one ! Middle". Bhima, the meaty muscular Pandava, hears this and emerges to meat, sorry meet, Ghatotkacha, because Bhima is the 'middle' one of the 3 sons of Kunti , wife of Pandu, and mother of Yudhishtra, Bhima, and Arjuna, in that order. They fight. Ghatotkacha is defeated and his fasting mother comes out (enters) and recognizing Bhima reconciles the two because Bhima is her husband and Ghatotkacha their son from their union. Why does Ghatotkacha agree to get a Brahmin to be eaten? "Whether among gods or among men, a mother is a deity", Ghatotkacha repeats a precept that would please Gertrude no end, at the meeting of the subconscious of two cultures, 2000 years and 7000 k.m.'s apart! Not to speak of speechless Donalbain who must, with father gone and royalty pre-ordained for older brother, wonder, nay wish, he was the "middle" man "madhyama"cannibalized by a demon's mama or swallowed by the earth itself! 

MEENU'S SHAKESPEARE 

It was in the autumn of year 2020 that i became a vegetarian, for good. It was during Navratri that i took the decision, and the festival helped provide the impetus.. The pandemic was raging and ranting, without making a sound, blowing gusts of infected wind without cracking cheek, thundering on doors and windows threatening to enter silently and steal Durga's life as miles of hapless laborers courageously pounded out their reverse "Pather Panchali". Isolated and starved of physical contact, restricted and restrained, masked and socially distanced, cautioned from talking too much or too close, debarred from gatherings and congregation, locked out of concerts and cinema, theatre and meetings, discussions and education, bars and beach, travel and tryst, it would be a rare person who wasn't wondering if this spelt the nemesis of the stage..whether we would ever see actors in a play again! In a rush to regurgitate ancient narratives with the hope of a revival, i ran into this that proved to be the final nail in the non-vegetarian coffin: 

(Enter Leir and Perillus very faintly) 

LEIR: Ah, my Perillus ,now i see we both Shall end our days in this unfruitful soil. Oh, i do faint for want of sustenance: And thou, i know, in little better case. No gentle tree affords one taste of fruit, To comfort us .... ... 

PERILUS: Ah, my dear Lord, how doth my heart lament, To see you brought to this extremity! O, if you love me, as you do profess Or ever thought well of me in my life , (He strips up his arm) Feed on this flesh, whose veins are not so dry But there is virtue left to comfort you. O, feed on this, if this will do you good, I'll smile for joy, to see you suck my blood. 

LEIR: I am no Cannibal, that i should delight To slake my hungry jaws with human flesh: I am no devil or ten times worse than so, To suck the blood of such a peerless friend. O, do not think that i respect my life So dearly , as i do thy loyal love. Ah, Britain , i shall never see the more, That has unkindly banished thy king: Yet thou dost not make me to complain, But they which were more near to me than thou. (from The True Chronicle History of King Leir) 

Meenu, my cook, returned after a Covid-induced hiatus of about 10 months and found me reading Shakespeare's version loudly, as i do all my plays, and this one curiously ended thus : LEAR: And my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no, life? Why should a dog , a horse, a bat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never. Meenu understands no English and wouldn't know "rat" from "bat" - or bacteria from virus - but it must have been the plaintive 'no's and repetitive 'never's that aroused her curiosity and she wanted to know what i was reading. I asked her if she had heard the story of a King who had three daughters and decided to give the largest part of his kingdom/his wealth to the one who loved him most. No, Meenu said, she had never heard this story, but it must be the youngest one whom the King loved the most! So, what do you think happened, i asked! She didn't know, she said, but she suspected the youngest one would take advantage of the situation, skewed as it was in her favor! How so, i asked. Spread lies about the older sisters, poison her father's mind against them, she said, getting somewhat agitated by now. But why, i persisted. After all, he loves her the most and is going to give her the largest share, perhaps the full thing, entire kingdom, so where is the need then for her to talk the older sisters down? And Meenu answered: But she doesn't know that, for sure, does she? Parents aim to love their children equally, so there is no saying the father's purported greater love for the youngest daughter will necessarily yield her a bigger inheritance , said Meenu insightfully! THAT THE FATHER HAS CALLED FOR A SHOW OF LOVE, A TRUST VOTE, SIMPLY REINFORCES THE FACT THAT FOR ALL THE TALK OF WHOM DADDY LOVE'S MOST (opening lines of the drama) THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY TO BE SURE..and it is this uncertainty that keeps us glued to the action.. How would Cordelia touch Meenu's subconscious; how address her understanding, or her bias? Truth can be subverted, both Shakespeare and Meenu know this, deep in their hearts, but by whom? Why? How will KING LEAR surprise a cook in India 420 years after it touched the lives of carpenters and craftsmen, shoe and button makers, masons and artisans in a London population of 160,000 ( Gurgaon is 10 times that today) of which 50% were below the age of 16 and men were outnumbered by women by 30%. But Meenu doesn't know her Shakespeare, she hasn't read the play, she doesn't know the outcome, her subconscious is clear of any "doctoring"! How do you keep a knowing knowledgeable audience - not an untutored lot, raw in feeling and emotion - distant enough from their education to surprise them? What should be presented for viewing? What should go into a production, what should be the interpretation .. to keep it relevant .. without subverting the truth?

  WHAT DID LENNOX SEE ? 

This is just one in a series of questions i have raised in my earlier papers, too, to draw attention to how Shakespeare has remained "theatrically", drama-wise relevant even after 400 years of the same story being told and retold, plot known by heart, characters played over and over again. Magically, Shakespeare's works despite their global repeated production, or because of it, keep generating new ideas, keep stirring fresh thoughts, raising questions, triggering debate, the more they are in performance.. What Yoga is to body and mind, Vedas are to the intellect and spirit, the Natya Shastra aka 5th Veda is to the imagination and subconscious. Only in performing a play do you come anywhere close to appreciating it , because only then do you start grappling with the real issues raised keeping in mind the audience you are preparing to raise them with. To understand the text of the play - the script, as it is popularly known - it is best to power read the play. What precisely is the character doing as s/he delivers his or her lines ? Where is s/he standing or moving in relation to the others s/he is interacting with and the audience ? What is s/he wearing ? What is s/he holding? How did s/he get here, from where? What is the motivation? These are some basic questions that must jog your mind to understand how they are playing on the consciousness and subconscious of charactor and the viewing public..and what they are doing to the text! In Shakespeare it becomes extremely complex to keep up with his rich audio-video interplay, which is why reading his plays is about the most limited ways of getting in touch with genius. He is not just playing with words...he is playing with your mind...let us see if you can catch up .. My earlier questions were: where would you place Antony in the murder scene? (Paper: Shakespeare Performance in a Democracy within a Continuum that is India) and in what clothes would you dress the Witches? (Realpolitik of the Spectacle: Shakespeare Performance in a Democracy within a Continuum that is India) Let's now try and tackle this : the air is dizzy with drunkenness..there's the stench of liquor and blood all around ..the mind is overheated..nature is cracking up ..the audience is rattled by the ghastly murder of the night just gone by..when Macduff screams..all hell breaks loose..two thanes rush into Duncan's chamber..who will you send in first? Why? Lennox is an excellent reader of faces..(Remember the very first lines he says in the play on seeing Ross?.....) Macbeth's face is as a book in which men may read strange matters. Did Lennox read Macbeth's face? When? When they were in Duncan's chamber or earlier? Did Lennox read the faces of the "sleepy grooms", the guards, their hands and faces "badged" with blood? Not steeped, stained, dripping, but "badged"! Did Macbeth notice Lennox reading the guards' faces? Did he kill them in front of Lennox, with Lennox help or reluctance? Did young Lennox simply concur ? Did his loyalty dither? Shakespeare is the master of atmospherics..a scene painter with words par excellence, we know... by simple repetition he can turn the theatre and the audience head into an echo chamber..but did you notice how by the simple entry and exit of characters, by placing them in the right place at the right time he can reveal so much, raise so many issues, ask so many questions? Theatre is not just about words, action, costumes..it is also about entries and exits, who goes where, who goes there! CINEATRE - A PORTMANTEAU of the subconscious - to reveal the sub-conscious how are we to trnsfer this experience to a million viewers every day 

THE TWO PORTIAS - THE PORTIAN BIND 

PARAM VIR CHAKRAVYUH - THE NOT TOO CLEVER CLEVER DOGBERRY