A Dharmic Rediscovery of Our Interconnected Wholeness

I first got introduced to theatre in my high school days when the Sanksrit teacher at our school (Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Tripunithura) selected me for the main theatre production for the school annual day. The drama titled 'Ooru bhangam' was the final scene of the Mahābhārata battle when Duryodhana is defeated by Bhīma at the end of a fiercely fought fight. Though in Malayalam, the drama followed the principles of Sanskrit theatre and had a 'Sūtradhār' at the beginning of the play who sets the context for the play with a touch of impromptu humour and entertaining the audience even while describing the story leading up to the scene of the play. I was trained for over a month a traditional Chākyār artist to play the role of the Sutradhār in that drama.

I relished the role, of course, but more importantly, this was also my first experiential introduction to the power of theatre in creating social dialogue. The Chākyār or Sūtradhār had a special place in the scheme of the play as traditionally they held the power to mock and tease even the King or authority figures using their sharp satire. This was often used to bring to light pertinent issues of the masses in a light hearted yet serious manner from the unarticulated to the articulated space. Perhaps, this is also the first time I experienced the idea of 'Serious Play' without knowing that term.

Many years later, I once again experienced the transformative power of theatre when I became part of Ritambhara and experienced the offerings designed by Sri Raghu Ananthanarayanan such as Mahābhārata Immersion. As I started working with theatre and its application in the space of self-exploration and healing, I got excited to delve deeper into it. In 2022, I completed a certification program in the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) offered by the Centre for Community Dialogue & Change (CCDC) in Mumbai.

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is a form of interactive theatre invented by Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal. It is a participatory art form that is meant and applied as an empowering and liberating practice that inspires individual and collective transformation. Uniqueness of TO, also sometimes referred to the Forum Theatre, is that the spectators become performers or spect-actors, acting out solutions to social problems that the play depicts. Some of the key ideas in TO pedagogy are:

• Acknowledge there is oppression.
• Name the oppression.
• Identify the Oppressor and the Oppressed in a situation of oppression.

While I enjoyed working with the theatre games and processes in TO and integrated many of these ideas into my own inner work and yoga workshops and retreats, I always felt ambivalent and conflicted about the pre-occupation of TO pedagogy with the dichotomy of the Oppressor & the Oppressed.

In a world that is already torn apart by the processes of 'othering', do we need to accentuate this by getting hung up with calling out the Oppressor and the Oppressed?

How can this pre-occupation create a dialogic space where the Oppressor and the Oppressed can discover possibility for reconciliation and healing?

As I stayed with these questions, I discovered Theatre for Living (TfL) designed by David Diamond, a student of Augusto Boal. I got oriented to this pedagogy in 2023 when I got an opportunity to attend a workshop hosted by CCDC in Bangalore.

TfL weaves together TO, Systems Theory and the groundbreaking work of Fritjof Kapra, and David's own over 25 years of practical community-based popular theatre. Personally, I resonated a lot more with the ideas and approach of the TfL which attempts to go beyond the pre-occupation with the Oppressor and the Oppressed. Some of the questions TfL engages with are:

• From a perspective of Biology & Sociology, how is a community a living thing?
• How do we design a theatre practice to consciously work with living communities to help them tell their stories?
• How do we accomplish this without demonizing those characters with whom we disagree?
• Must we constantly do battle to defeat an endless stream of oppressors, or can we imagine a world in which we stop creating them?
• What practical games and exercises can we use to awaken group consciousness?

So, obviously when I got an opportunity to be part of a online dialogue with David Diamond two weeks ago, hosted by CCDC, I was quite excited and eager to hear more about David's perspective on this approach.

One of the questions I was curious to know about what a reference David made in his 2024 paper 'The Revolution We Need is Bridge-Building'. In this paper, he mentions about how the 'Oppressed/Oppressor' way of seeing is rooted in a Judeo/Christian model of good and evil, heaven and hell. He shared how the attitudes of 'You attack me, I annihilate you.' and looking at nature as a resource to exploit are originating in the Old Testament. He believes that today science has come a full circle back to indigeneous wisdom. The idea of interconnectedness is established in the relational space through a rediscovery of the indigenous wisdom. David was also humble and authentic enough to acknowledge that he does not believe TfL by itself will not solve all problems. However, it can create deeper spaces for dialogue.

This conversation left me reflecting on how it is now more than ever critical for us to start looking at embodied ways of re-integrating our identities and healing our sense of belonging. This work in practice is also part of the process of decolonisation of our minds, which is otherwise primed to label and divide furthering the process of 'othering'.

As long as we are stuck in the narrative of the Victim and the Oppressor, the search for a Saviour will never stop. How does one reclaim the authorship of one's life experience and act from a space of true choice? How does one experience the interconnectedness of the web of life and its wholeness?

This would be evident when one is able to act in a way that can enliven the self, the other, and the context simultaneously. And that could perhaps open up the possibility for a Dharmic rediscovery of our interconnected wholeness.

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