 This is the third module and it is titled drama the performative mode. The first two modules were devoted to understanding and generating creativity and to the writer's vocation and teaching of creative writing in the academic setup. This module advances the discussion of writing in the performative as well as narrative framework. The lecture is titled introduction to drama and playwriting. It is divided into four parts. Part one deals with the rationale for teaching drama. The second part deals with writers and playwriting. The third one with understanding drama and especially its ancient origin and the last part deals with the multi-layered nature of drama especially in print culture. First of all, let us examine this rationale for teaching drama. This is very, very important part of what we have added to our effort because we find that very often drama has not been explored sufficiently in creative writing courses and also various fairly well established manuals of creative writing. To give you an instance in the art of fiction written by the famous writer, novelist and also teacher of creative writing, John Gardner titled The Art of Fiction Notes on Craft for Young Writers. We find that he has used lot of terminology from Aristotle in order to describe short story and its plotting devices, character formation within short story, novels, etc. And although these assumptions are based on sound understanding of Aristotle, but for the learner there is not sufficient clarity provided. And I think that clarity needs to be pitched into the history and origin and the special features of drama as an art form because surely there is a very, very big difference between drama as a performative form and fiction which is read in the silence of one's own choice of place. So, in other words, I would say that when we talk about drama, we are not suggesting that you need to commit yourself to a specific form right from the beginning, but at the same time what we are suggesting is a kind of openness so that you can examine number of forms, literary forms in order to arrive at your own sense of purpose as a writer. So, drama therefore in our opinion needs to be placed within creative writing courses through its history as a performative form which in turn may lead to any kind of innovative genre crossing to fiction that is novel, poetry, cinema, television, internet. And we keep that whole range in mind and we will also examine some work which brings in these connections in an interesting new innovative manner. The creative writing class therefore should start with drama as an art form and therefore I would say that we would like to really place before you some of the most fascinating features of drama as a performative form. In module 2, we had examined writing related insights provided by three different canonized writers and each one of them had a very different relationship to literary, different literary forms. Most of them really thrived on their you know acceptance by readers as writers of fiction, but I think the three of them need to be placed before you again in order to show to you how writers need to explore different literary forms in order to also hone their own perceptions and skills as writers however great they may be. I think each one of us needs this kind of honing of one's own skills as writers. And therefore, I would again emphasize this idea by placing Helen Sixus' point of view before you because I remember reading her writing and I was quite struck by what she said about her relationship to drama as opposed to her relationship to fiction which was a very intense inward looking relationship. And she felt that by writing plays she was able to develop a sense of the other which her solipsistic fiction did not permit. That was really a very, very important observation I felt because in drama the sense of otherness is really present in abundance and we will see how actually that has happened in drama as a participatory form of representation. But before we do that let us look at these three writers in order to see what their relationship to play writing was. These three provide very different profiles because of course they are very different writers also they belong to very, very different historical periods, nations and their own personal impulses are also the driving force behind their writing. Now, Camus wanted to be a playwright at would on the other hand abandon theater related engagement after initial forays and Tagore wrote prose dramas as well as dance dramas but thought of himself as a poet philosopher. So, in some ways Camus was the most committed and passionate proponent of theater as an art form. We have already talked about this engagement of Camus with theater in module 2 in which he not only you know adapted some of the important work that he was examining specially Dostoevsky. He also acted in some of the plays that were you know adapted by other people and he acknowledged the physicality of theater by talking about its exceptional you know sort of demands on understanding between movements voices and bodies. It is interesting to note that he himself was aware of his relationship to theater as a kind of debatable activity specially from the point of view of his own original plays. He wrote many plays and one of the anthologies is sort of was brought out. It was titled Caligula and three other plays in which he very, very candidly mentions a somewhat limited perception of how he wanted his theater to be which is rather different from his own adventures as a novelist. There he was much more experimental whereas in terms of theater he felt that the Greek model of tragedy was the most dominant, the most powerful model that he wanted to emulate because it involved a sense of human fate in all his simplicity and grandeur. Now of course one can go into these plays which right now we would not do but this is just to point out that despite his passionate intensity he made a distinct difference between his relationship to drama as a form. Even the creative models he chose are atavistic whereas in terms of his fiction, in terms of his philosophical ideas he was much more inventive. No surprise there then that plays such as Caligula and these other three plays that did not really make a very deep impact on the audience and also Caligula although it raised questions which bordered on existential angst, a sense of absurdity but Camus refused to accept these as philosophical plays. He said they are plays that dealt with human destiny. In Caligula he was talking about the fact that men die and they are unhappy. So in other words, this relationship with different forms does not necessarily lead to the writer's acceptance by the readers for their contribution in that particular form in the way the writer may want it. Sometimes there are lots of surprises that await the writer also. Atwood on the other hand if you look at Atwood she right from the beginning you know although she was involved in reading of plays, watching plays, participating in theatre work in Canada but she had a very tenuous relationship with theatre and in negotiating with the dead she briefly talked about this by pointing out how the reading that they were expected to do was very Eurocentric and therefore it interfered with her search for her own authentic voice. So partly she felt quite you know in awe of these great writers but at the same time she and they did provide a great understanding of the possibilities of the form but at the same time she needed to you know sort of transcend that influence. So let us read what she has to say in this regard. She says you were supposed to be familiar with Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. She is talking about the dramatically inclined readers that also Kirtigarde, Stippenwolf, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Enesco, Bresch, Boll and Prandello and she says these were the magic names. So then she read, she tried her relationship with theatre but instead of writing plays she was part of the design team for theatre and then I think I do not notice much that she is written or said about theatre even. The third writer and again what we are trying to do is to point out how we need to be very open minded about different forms of writing because they perform different kinds of functions so far as the reader or the audience is concerned. Now our own Indian writer, Rabindranath Tagore as you know very well he wrote poetry, plays, novels, short stories and essays and placed his reading of drama and literature within the notion of Vishwa Sahitya. Tagore's engagement with comparative literature is evident in his reading and writing practice. The term comparative literature refers to the fact that you know Tagore was reading Indian writing which of course is very diverse but he was also reading western literature or non-Indian literature and there is a sense of comparison between these which is evident when you are located in such a comparative situation. So this reading is very interesting in terms of drama as well because his reading of Gatiz Faust for example is one example that is mentioned quite categorically in his autobiography and he points out how his reading of Gatiz Faust in fact helped him understand the sense of certain universal qualities of literature because Faust for him was not just a western you know man or a western humanistic figure but Faust for him was a universal figure. To quote a recent translation of his speech in this regard he said that if we understand that in literature the universal man that is Vishwa Manav expresses himself then we can perceive what is truly worthy of observing in literature. This is a very thought provoking statement and we would like to actually problematize the reading of Faust in some of the subsequent sessions with you but in any case in terms of his reading of western literature Tagore was reading Faust but so far as his own writing is concerned he was writing prose plays as well as you know dance dramas. His dance dramas are much talked about because they provided him a sort of new avenue for highlighting social ills for example his play Chadalika which was published in 1933 dealt with untouchability. And what is really fascinating about these plays is the fact that they were written because of his deep engagement with the political discourse the political nationalistic discourse in our country and it was for example this particular play was written soon after the publication of his essay titled Mahatma Ji and the depressed humanity in 1932. So with his great acumen and his deep desire to communicate important ideas through his writing I think Tagore fully used and explored the public platform that these issue based plays and their performance provided. His plays were staged by the students of Vishwabharti and they also used this opportunity to raise funds for Vishwabharti but I think more or less Tagore remained a poet at heart and his plays unfortunately have not had a pan-Indian presence unlike his poetry. So these are the three profiles that we wanted you to sort of again think of because you have already looked at or studied some of the ideas about creative writing that these three great figures have provided us with and therefore it is important to place them on going manner within our own understanding of literature and how it is shaped how it is written and what are the elements that go into decision making by creative writers. Now let us turn to drama and it is very very special qualities as I said these are sometimes not even touched upon. What we need to understand is of course the ancient origin of drama. In this regard some of the most important work has been done by Richard Shekna who in the 70s tried to establish you know within the framework of the new notion of performance theory the significance of performative forms like drama. And according to him the phenomena called either all drama, theater, performance occur among all the world's peoples and date back as far as historians, archaeologists and anthropologists can go. Now this is definitely a scientific insight and I use that term deliberately because Shekna has actually evoked number of you know examples where historians, archaeologists and anthropologists are in total agreement in terms of how far back this performative evidence of performative activities goes back in history. Now apart from the scientific veracity of this insight what to me seems very exciting is the possibility of looking at this depth and also the povasiveness of this insight in terms of almost every kind of human formation. So, let me go on with two or three strands of this essay that Shekna wrote in the 70s is gone on to write many studies on performance theory it has almost become an institutionalized idea. But at the time he wrote this essay this was a very fluid field and I feel this particular essay has a charge which you should really borrow some energy from. So, let us see what Shekna has said in this particular essay he has pointed out that performative activities have been co-existent with the human condition. And I think for you and me it is very important to understand that what this actually refers to is the you know existence of performative activity by way of pre-writing forms of symbolic expression. Now of course, it does make sense to really imagine that past where language or literacy had not really developed and at the same time human beings wanted to you know communicate with each other. But what is noteworthy about this position is the manner in which Shekna has also brought in the study of Huizinga titled homoludence in which Huizinga has also established the coexistence of playful behavior in terms of the human condition. And if you want I can read you know from Huizinga in order to point out what that consists of in his opinion he defined play as a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life. So, I think this layering of performance playful behavior which is separated from ordinary life and also the repeated nature of this performative activity right in the earliest known stages of human history that provides an exciting entry point into the understanding of performative forms for us today. And what is also very important to understand is that right from the earlier stages these spaces for performance were also many times separated from you know spaces that were used for daily day to day activities. They were seen as either sacred or mysterious or special spaces where the participants came together and performed imaginative activities in order to either celebrate their experience or to invoke the spirits that they you know if for their survival. And there are different kinds of things that may have happened although there is evidence to suggest that certain acts of hunting were you know were repeatedly undertaken in order to show the victory against antagonistic forces. But all in all I think what we really need to imagine today is this sense of the ancient nature of this performance and by implication the pervasiveness of performative behavior in human beings in every kind of social formation even today. So, I think what I like you to do is to imagine the deepest recesses of the past and the performative needs of human beings. If you want you can read this essay by Shekhar from the book you need not read the whole book. You can read this essay where he is also given evidence from Stone Age where the footprints of performers in secluded caves were found and the drawings of hunting and the dangers the antagonistic forces that were faced by human beings at that point in history. The enactment of these is sort of indicated by way of these paintings, but there are also footprints that show that these were performed. You can think of this the reasons for repeated and regulated gatherings for this display behavior. So, you can let your imagination you know play out the past you know within you in order to understand how innate and how vigorous this form is how much it is a part of us in terms of this desire to also celebrate critique and in that sense enjoy the experiences of our own life. So, then I think some more questions can be added to this exercise and I hope if you are in a group you would undertake this activity with the group was this ancient performance a means of celebrating the victory over antagonistic forces is that the only impulse or was performance meant to show the threats and survival strategies to the younger members of the community for their future education and again I am sort of embedding my questions in the essay by Richard where he also expresses his disagreement with Huizinga who actually theorized his the theory is a lot more complicated and sort of simplified it for our purpose, but Huizinga sort of actually emphasizes play and in itselfness of the play he feels that that was an end in itself that whole aesthetic impulse the also liminal impulse or the ludic impulse that is an end in itself as opposed to that Shekner feels that if we add the survival value of play to this reckoning or this understanding of this you know level of human behavior or this aspect of human behavior then we get better insight. Now, you can explore the essay to see how Shekner has developed his own point of view, but I think basically it is sufficient at this point to talk about the ancient origin of this form and also the pervasiveness of this form in every culture every human formation even today. The next idea that we need to talk about before starting our sessions on drama is the understanding of the multilayered nature of drama specially within the print culture within the print culture there are more dimensions that are added. Now, in the same essay Shekner has provided us with a diagram of sorts although that diagram goes into the early performative behavior links it to Amagad of nineteen I think sixties or so specially western Amagad American Amagad, but I mean I am not really going into those interconnections I am only trying to understand and help you understand that when we talk about drama as an art form that we need to explore in order to gain deeper insights about writing process also. What we need to understand is the multilayered nature of drama within the print culture so I am not getting into any other insight from that essay. So, four layers have been identified by Shekner according to him drama is the domain of the author script is the domain of the teacher or interpreter. So, the drama is written by the playwright and this it needs to be interpreted for performance and therefore, you need interpreter of the drama usually in fiction the reader is the interpreter, but here you need an interpreter who in turn would symbolically and through artistic combinations fulfill the sense of that script and therefore, the third layer then is an equally vital layer in the you know in terms of this form which is the domain of performers. So, even if you are a playwright and you are writing a play you would really have to keep these layers in mind so theater is the domain of performers and finally, performance is the domain of the audience and of course, is pointed out very rightly that there is a lot of blurring of lines between everyday life and the space that performance provides and that is a highly ill-defined area of how people come to performances with their own baggage and then they see plays and then they are transformed through that experience, but basically even if you are a person who wants to write plays and not necessarily produce them or you know direct them for theater, but the fact is that automatically the form involves a kind of envisioning of the performative physicality of whatever you have to say. So, most writers have chosen to write plays because they feel intensely about this public platform that theater provides or drama provides. So, I think this interconnection is what I would like you to understand and it is really not a very simple interconnection and therefore, we would like to end this session with a modern classic which has problematized the layers of theater as an art form. These layers can be redefined in different ways. You can also sort of show the limitation of one over the other, but I think basically these layers can be separated, but they also need to be looked at very carefully in terms of how this needs to be understood by you. So, let us end this session with a modern classic which has problematized these layers and it is the problematization that I would like to emphasize and not the imitation of any given model. So, this is what this excerpt is all about. This is written by Luigi Perandelo. The title of the play is Six Characters in Search of an Author. If you look at the list of performers, you have actors of the company, the manager, leading lady, second lady, to the mechanist, the dough keeper, scene shifters, promter, property man, a whole lot of people who are involved in theater, they are represented on stage. So, this is a play within a play and in this play, this particular theater company is rehearsing a play which has already been written. So, it is a finished product that they are interpreting and then six characters of the comedy in the making enter the stage. So, this is also a stage within a stage and the characters are the father, the mother, the stepdaughter, the son, madame, pace, the boy and the child, these two do not speak and they are on stage and let us see what happens very briefly. At this point, the dough keeper has entered from the stage door and advances towards the manager's table, taking off his braided cap. During this maneuver, the six characters enter and stop by the door at back of stage so that when the door keeper is about to announce they are coming to the manager, they are already on the stage. As I said, stage within a stage, a tenuous light surrounds them. I love this description here. A tenuous light surrounds them, the faint breath of their fantastic reality. Now, you can read these lines in your own way, but they almost suggest as if they have come right from the imagination of us unknown or unnamed author, but they are in search of an author and let us see how they describe their own dilemma. The manager is furious of course, because he is involved in the rehearsal process. I am rehearsing, he says and you know perfectly well no one is allowed to come in during rehearsals, turning to the characters. Who are you? Please, what you want? And the father coming forward a little followed by the others who seem embarrassed, he says. As a matter of fact, we have come here in search of an author. So, now the lecture ends and the discussion begins. Of course, you would need to read the script fully. It is one of the greatest plays of our times. So, do read it carefully, but in any case the multilayered nature of drama I think persists and we need to problematize it. Let us have a look at the works cited list. Thank you for this session.