 This lecture is titled performance and script writing and what we are going to do is to provide you some rationale about mime as an art form which provides deep understanding of drama as a performative form. The lecture is divided into four parts. In part one, we would provide you this rationale in some detail. Then we would look at mime and also some process oriented definitions and finally, the relationship between performance and script writing. As I said earlier, we are looking at this material from the point of view of writers and therefore, our focus is on the writing process. To highlight the distinctive nature of drama, we feel strongly that it is necessary to understand some of the forms that are exclusively non-verbal and mime therefore, is the most ancient and also in some ways a very powerful building block for understanding theater, performance, drama, all of these interrelated terms and also processes. What we also would like you to remember is the fact that even when you are performing a mime or you want to write a mime, you have to think about it as an artistic process and also a process which provides your imagined worldview and also the manner in which you want to present it, it should be clearly edged out in the script that you write. So, let us actually start with this process in a slightly different way. Let us first imagine empty space of the stage. We are looking at this empty space, let us move to a mime, it is titled playing by the book and you can play it anywhere, but we would place our actors in a setting that is familiar to us. The actor enters with the chair, places the chair at the center of the stage, sits on the chair. Looks a bit bewildered, a book falls close to him, looks quizzically at the book, picks it up, watches it, opens the pages, seems scripted by it, closes the book and sits silently, picks the book, holds it tightly, slow anger builds up with a sudden impulsive gesture, throws the book, fade out. The audience that is you reads his body language and the stage setting, silence speaks. After watching this performance, what you can do is to record your response and of course, the response cannot be predicted, but I suppose what it would do is to help you understand various strands of the mime. For example, the way the empty space is battled, the way the gestures and the body language is constructed very deliberately, almost modifying your sense of natural social behavior. It sort of modifies it to achieve an artistic intent. It may also help you understand and evaluate whether this particular piece requires words or it is enough to really look at the piece and experience the point of view of the author and the point of view of the actor who is interpreting the script. This is only part of the script right now, the next part will be placed before you towards the end of this session, but I think what we are trying to really help you understand is the physical nature of this mode of representation. So, even while writing the script, I think a playwright vividly imagines the physical gestures. I think there is a slight difference in the imaginative process of let us say short story writer and a playwright. There may be many other reasons as to why a writer decides to write plays as opposed to short stories of fiction or poetry, but at the same time I think the physicality is much more vivid in writing plays and then imagining your characters. So, then what again we have said so far are three things that theatre, mime in particular but theatre in general, it battles empty space and this is battle through a combination of what may seem like natural social imitation of action, but it is modified through the symbolic intent that a playwright wishes to provide to the activity and to the incident or to the situation that is chosen by him or her in order to make a particular artistic point. So therefore, the term mimesis you can begin to note is another term that is used in order to talk about imitation. We will talk about it later during our discussion of Aristotelian ideas and also their contemporary interpretations, but the notion of mimesis or imitation is central to drama and in a way mime helps us understand this blend of the natural activities that are observed and their transformations that occur while performing. We would also like to constantly go back to the childhood forms of play and the state of childhood because again you notice the kind of imitative behavior and the kind of playfulness that is linked to that joyous imitation of various aspects of reality which in a way is very close to human nature. In order to help you understand another example of mime, we thought it would be really nice to look at the work of a mime artist from our own country and this is Jogesh Datta. The excerpt that we would play is titled The Bird and is part of the last act. Quite naturally we would like you to actually see the full clip and if possible the actual performance whenever is possible, but at the same time what this particular illustrative clip points out is the nature of construction. So the bird and the way the bird is constructed and in mime is the artist's body that really has to be used in order to convey the symbolic intent also. So although the symbolic intent will not be fully accessible through just a short clip, but when you see the full piece, I think the illustrative example will help you see the blend very clearly. Now Jogesh Datta, the mime artist whose work we have presented although it is enacted by another mime artist, it is interesting to again notice that his childhood mimicries were so interesting and powerful that actually it is these mimicries which helped him decide that he wanted to be a mime artist and these were performed when he was a child in very trying situations as a refugee during partition and I mention this because this is a point that I have made earlier also that I think watching children in every situation you realize that there is this innate sense of self expression or also various kinds of other cognitive activities that take place which help us understand human nature in a very interesting, exciting way. So it is his childhood activity mimicking people which many children do, but at the same time he began to understand the passion he felt for the form and later on he was influenced by Charlie Chaplin's work. So the written script of a mime therefore, whether it is Jogesh Datta or anybody else, it requires the writing process that is conceiving the sort of sense of what you want to say and fleshing it out so that the artistic intent of the playwright is you know clearly etched out and this is revealed through each activity, each mini activity or you know smallest fragment of the activity, action and gesture. So therefore, it is written in advance. There are also examples of this form from classical Indian tradition and Bharatmani in Natheshastra has talked about Mukh Abhinay and again if you look at this whole idea of Mukh Abhinay, it is really very interesting to note how elaborate it is and also there are contemporary practitioners who are giving it new dimensions. So you can dip into this website that we have mentioned for photo studies and another study that we would like you to look at is the you know study of the Rasa theory which professor Richard Schechner has presented in his book performance studies where he is also contrasted it with Paul Ekman and the work of Paul Ekman on the expression of emotions by the human face. So that kind of trajectory makes for very interesting dimension of how you know the body and the face you know the totality of it helps you really conceive of mime as an art form and as I said we are looking at mime you know for itself but also as sort of glimpse into an important building block of theatre activity because even in a regular play you have the subtext, the body language which is consciously worked out, the expressions, the movements, what is unstated all of these things are worked out. So mime gives you a very good sense of these layers of a regular play with people talking and you know people who are closer to reality, social reality as we comprehend it. So then I would say another example may be quite sort of suitable in order to understand the greatness of this form. In the 20th century it has been explored with great Vega and one of the great examples of contemporary mime is this particular piece by written by Samuel Lebeket titled act without words. This is a short play originally written in French and then translated in English by Becket himself and this of course translation process reflects Becket's artistic need for estrangement for his writing you know it would be very interesting for you to note that he wrote in French and then he translated his artistic work back into English his mother tongue and he felt that for his artistic vision and his artistic process this distancing was important. So this piece was also written in French first and then translated back into English. What it also contains is a sense or the notion of absurdity we have talked about it earlier while discussing Albert Camus. So you have some sense of this notion of absurdity and Becket was exploring it in his own different way and also in this mime then the sense of the absurd is non-verbally performed through a you know play which has a beginning a sense of beginning middle and end. It was written in 1956 and first performed in 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. So we will just play the clip for you first not really show you the written text we will just read the we will just place the short clip before you let us look at the synopsis based on watching this very short clip. Now let us see the synopsis of the play. So let me provide this for you the scene is repeated the same scene is repeated a number of objects are lowered into the set a palm tree with a single bow three cubes of varying sizes a length of knotted rope a tiny carafe labeled water the actor and also then the character the actor who is interpreting the character struggles to use each object after reflection each time the tantalizing object is withdrawn and so let us look at this synopsis again. So each time the tantalizing object is withdrawn and finally and this is a quote from the last part of the play he does not move he looks at his hands curtain. So now this particular play was taught in the elective last year and these are some of the ideas that we considered I like you to read this play the script of the play carefully yourself before responding to these questions. We understand the limitation of this process of teaching and learning you have to do a lot of reading on your own before we can get to talk about many of these scripts. So after you have read the script and it is a short one it will not really take too much of your time and it is very intensely worked out. So after reading it what you can do is to consider these ideas think about the specific dramatic genre and its artistic significance. This is to give you some of the queries that unfolded in the class. What is the man doing? Even if it puzzles you try to sort it out I would say you do not really have to love every piece every new piece that you read but what you should perhaps try to do is to figure out as to what the writer is trying to suggest as a so even if you do not really fully feel comfortable in the beginning it may be a good thing not to feel comfortable because it extends your sensibility in different ways. So the question is what is the man doing? Do the objects have any symbolic value? So why is the palm tree lowered? What are these cubes? What is the scissors and the rope? So you try to figure out if you know it sort of adds up to some interconnected meaning. What is the context or location of this dramatic situation? So desert, dazzling light, why? What do the terms flies, wing, stage refer to? So even if your connection with theatre or drama as an art form is not an easy one because many times people do not read plays. Please remember that all these theatre related elements are often provided by playwrights in the way they locate their characters even within their sense of the space that would be used. In the way the theatre space, the empty space would be used by the players, by the performers. So look at all these details in order to enjoy the greatness of this script and the power of this script. When we did this work in the class, you know the students performed the play. They wanted to. This particular group was very very keen on theatre and drama. So they performed this script really quite well and the character fell on this hard ground very convincingly the main character the protagonist and it was very well done you know. And after that we try to also figure out the meaning. So first it was read then performed and then we try to figure out the meaning. At the end of this process I gave them a test. So here are the questions that were plays before the students and I will also read the response of two students. One is an analytical response. The second one is a creative response. So does the title of the play evoke multiple connotations act without words, spell these out, give the meaning of the term mime, identify the antagonistic forces that the protagonist battles in this play. Now as you know in drama there is the sense of the protagonist and the antagonist. So what are the forces antagonistic forces? Now here is only one character. So what are the antagonistic forces that the protagonist battles in this play? Does this play allude to any myth or anecdote? Now allusion is a very powerful modern device. So is there any allusion which is not visible on surface but it is lurking in the subtext or lurking in the way the play is constructed, identify accurately. And finally does the resolution point towards tragic or comic tradition give reasons. As I said you know these were students who had read plays, they were also I think performers in different ways and they also performed this play and therefore some of this discussion immediately may not be accessible to you but later on when we talk about Aristotle and Aristotelian notion of tragedy, comedy and how it has been transformed in modern drama I think you will be able to relate to Peckett's take on the combination of the tragic and the comic but let us see what Ashwath had to say in terms of an analytical response to the reading of this play. He says and I am quoting parts of his answer, the mind shows the man's struggle. He used his mind and hands in every possible manner to ensure survival. So remember this is the dazzling light in a desert so this man's survival is threatened and he uses his mind and his hands in every possible way to ensure survival. This is what Ashwath fell and then he goes on to say his constant experimenting allows him to learn to use his tools effectively but as soon as he masters them they are confiscated so they are withdrawn from him bringing him back to his starting point. So he strives, he achieves something and then he goes back to a situation which is like going back to square one. He went on to point out that the play act without words seems similar to the myth of Tantalus who stood in a pool of water and every time he bent to drink the water it receded away from him and finally if one takes cue from the absurdist philosophy one realizes that one is unable to find meaning in life and the universe. So there is no pre-given meaning. Now to deal with the absurd one could possibly resort to either suicide to escape the absurd so the rope and the scissors or accept the absurd and continue living with it. So this is what Ashwath had to say and then later on in the same process we allowed for or kept certain windows open for creative response to the script and I am not, I would not be able to read the full answer here but I would certainly like to read an excerpt written by Kanishk Dutt, a play written by Kanishk Dutt and the excerpt from that play. He titled his response as another act without words and I do want to add that later on Kanishk convinced many of his friends to perform this play in IIT although I was not able to see it but I think they rehearsed and they performed this full play. So this is another act without words and somewhat incomplete excerpt I would like to place before you. So this is how it reads, the stage has at the far center four identical chairs three of them in a file and the fourth one in front of the center one all of them facing the audience. The center back chair remains empty always boxing bell rings lights on the center front chair fade in again a person is sitting back on the chair reading a book holding it in front of him with one hand nearly covering the entire face and this goes on to build on this whole process and the point of view also becomes gradually quite clear. But I will have to stop reading this excerpt here and move on to another aspect of our discussion which is to look at the physicality of drama and also therefore the process oriented definitions. These were provided in the 70s and 80s by a lot of theater practitioners because this idea of the performative aspect of theater as opposed to a purely literary one had really preoccupied a lot of academicians, artists and theater practitioners. So now this is from Bernard Beckerman's dynamics of drama and I quite like this definition where he says theater occurs when one or more human beings isolated in time and or space present themselves to another or others in imagined acts and according to him drama he says is organically connected with theater and is in truth but a special form of the art of presentation. So even the verbal behavior is presented and of course the non-verbal dimension we have already talked about. Beckerman considers his standpoint as a departure from the conventional use of the term drama and in order to sort of show the you know his differences from the conventional approach he quotes an author of Fry and his definition of drama as a my masses of dialogue or conversation. The other definition that he does not seem very comfortable with comes from Susan Langer who described drama as essentially an enacted poem. Joggan he really pointed out that his is much more process oriented definition in terms of the organic links between drama in terms of the literary written script and the performative aspect which are vital to this whole process this whole artistic process. Once again I like to point out that this lecture and the approach towards drama was actually undertaken after looking at the student aspirations. This is what Agam Goyal one of the UG elective students had to say about his expectations from the creativity and creative writing course. He says I took this course to enhance my writing skills I am a writer and have written drama and poetry my aim is to enhance these skills. The other idea is to learn more about creativity what exactly could be considered as a form of creativity and all aspects related to it. I like you to emphasize doing a play or drama and then having a discussion about it. I would also like to know more about famous models of drama and script writing as I would like to improve my script writing skills. I like to have more information about theater groups and their functioning. So this is what Agam Goyal had said and as I said this particular group did a lot of performative work as assignments also. Finally I want to end this session with this notion of being and doing and performance and script writing as writing about being doing and let me see how this is described by Beckerman. He points out that the distinguishing characteristic of theater is conscious self-presentation. It is not the presentation of a painting or of a film but of one's very being. Yet being that wholesomeness of life in a person cannot actually be presented in a time bound manner or in a time bound medium because when observed over a span of time being becomes doing. So being becomes doing and then he again quotes from Stanislavski, one of the great practitioners of the art of acting and also is written very important studies. We will talk about it if necessary later on. So he says that one of the first lessons Stanislavski taught was that even if a person sits absolutely still he or she is doing something and he is talking about stage setting. The observer may not be able to interpret the meaning of this doing without an illuminating context. Nevertheless, he or she witnesses not being but doing. That was a profound statement and it again helps us understand the nature of theater. I would end with this second part of the mime alone and together. It is subtitled Voices. The actor enters the empty space he had left temporarily. He has a sheaf of papers and a large pencil in his hand moves with the resolute stride sits on the lone chair deep in thought. The pencil moves on the page. He begins to hum. The humming energizes him enough to stand up with paper and pencil. He begins to shout with the rising crescendo the voice radiating in different directions ending with a triumphant shout curtain. After watching this performance let me say the lecture ends the discussion begins and I hope you will talk to each other and here is the list of the material we have referred to. Thank you very much.