After being empty for nearly two years, Nepal’s theater halls are slowly stirring back to life, even as pandemic safety protocols still mean far fewer people in the audience than before. But that is better than nothing for many artists eager to step onto the stage again, and for the theatergoers who have missed seeing them perform.
Says Yubraj Ghimire, director of Shilpee Theatre in Kathmandu: “The seven to eight theater halls in the valley, all of them could survive on the box office before the pandemic, and have restarted steadily with the pandemic safety measures.”
Community-based theater groups and freelance artists, however, are still waiting for their cue to start performing again. Or, to be more exact, for the funds to start flowing into their coffers once more so that they can resume their performances.
“Unfortunately, during the pandemic, we could not manage to get any funds for Abiral, so we are in kind of a pause,” says Kabita Bahing Rai of the Abiral-The Arts Group based in Kathmandu.
Kishor Dangol, a freelance theater performer and director, also says, “The first wave … and lockdown were difficult for our profession because we directly work with the community. … Nobody knew it would be prolonged like this.” He cites one instance when there had been funds allotted for a regional theater festival. But the festival was later canceled, says Dangol, because “they (funders) wanted to invest (the budget) in pandemic (activities).”
The streets used to be the stage for Nepal’s community theater activists, who are imbued with a mission to create public awareness of sociocultural issues. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all their activities have had to take a pause.
For sure, community theater people would be the first to say that they are not in it for the money. But there is also the reality of everyday survival even for the most committed members of any theatrical troupe. And however minimal one’s props and costumes are, there remain bills to be paid.
“Theater in rural Nepal is not that expensive or profit-driven as in Kathmandu,” says Heera Bijuli Nepali, founder of Karnali Art Centre in the village of Mugu in northwest Nepal. “So we don’t have to pay a heavy amount of rent for the space. But yes, whatever little minimum assignments we have had all got canceled due to the pandemic. So most artists have returned to work as laborers, and at the lockdown time, the other work wasn’t available; some have migrated to Kathmandu.”
Yet, he points out, even with barely any funding, his group still tried to stage a play on the caste system in the far western district of Rukum’soti where six Dalit youths were killed in May last year. That was at the height of a lockdown due to the pandemic, however. The theater troupe promised local officials that it would strictly observe social distancing, but it was not permitted to perform.
A platform for raising awareness
Unlike traditional theater, community theater uses the platform to create awareness of sociocultural issues. It is also freer in form and often engages the audience directly. In Nepal, there are more than 50 theater groups doing community and street theater. The performances are usually done out in the open and are for free, and the audience is made up largely of those who stop and watch. While local clubs often take care of finding funds for the performances, financial support for the troupes can also come from the government or from local and international nongovernmental organizations.
According to Nepali theater icon Sunil Pokharel, street dramas began to be performed in Nepal sometime in 1979. In a 2007 interview with Nepal Monitor Journal, he also mused, “Drama is a kind of form which is supported by the community. It was shown in the dabalis (central markets) and in the open. And that was the ancient form. Different cultural groups speaking different languages have their own traditions. Many of these indigenous communities perform in the open. Later, such performances took the form of street dramas.”
Pokharel is actually the pioneer of kachachari or forum theater in Nepal. He explained in the 2007 interview: “This is one of the techniques of the theater of the oppressed. They call it ‘Forum Theater’ in English. You raise an issue. There is your intention (niyat) in your selection of that issue. And you stop the drama just when you raise the problem, and ask your audience members about how the play should be continued. This is how the audience members direct the rest of the play: ‘Oh, let‘s do it in this way. Does this solution work in life? If it works, then OK. If not, what can be the alternatives?’ The audience does the thinking and suggesting.”
Karnali’s Nepali meanwhile says that part of the reason he and his colleagues do theater is to “save our culture, language, and make people aware.”
He adds, “As community theater activists, we have raised many issues, such as gender balance and violence and natural disaster — earthquake, fire, floods — issues related to the environment, and child/women trafficking.”
Nepali continues, “When you consider theater as a tool for momentum-building and a medium to bring social transformation, one should choose to go to the rural parts of Nepal where nobody knows what theater is as an art form and what it can do as a tool for change. I am doing it. Theater with this new technology is compelling, and we can comment on the social issues in the local language through visualization. It is easy to make people aware through the theater instead of giving a two-hour lecture.”
The pandemic as a play’s focus?
It helps that Karnali’s stock of original plays is made up of works that are flexible and adaptable; a few changes here and there can easily render them relevant to whatever issue is current in a particular community. Nepali says, for instance, that they were ready to perform and address the issues surrounding the Dalit youth murders last year because they already had plays on gender and caste.
Some traditional theater groups have tried their hand doing theater activism as well. Artists from Shilpee Theatre, for example, did skits as part of protests staged earlier this year. Ghimire also told onlinekhabar last February: “We did 14 performances on the streets, be it in support of Dr. Govinda KC or in favor of the laborers. We also enacted a drama about the anarchy of the Oli regime.”
Community theater groups like the Kathmandu-based Abiral-The Arts Group have a vibrant lineup of plays, workshops, and demonstrations on issues ranging from child marriage to rape. (Screenshots used with permission from Abiral-The Arts Group)
Ghimire thinks the pandemic itself could well become the subject of plays in the future. He tells Asia Democracy Chronicles, “They think, why would people come to see problems that society still faces collectively or individually? Though it (the interest) will come later — we have seen the number of memoirs related to Nepal’s conflict (rise) after the peace process in 2006.”
Nepali, for his part, is still somewhat distracted by the impact of the pandemic on community theater, although he is already thinking about how to lure his artists back from whatever part-time work they have picked up. He is also busy working on a project about how the communist movement dealt with a caste question in Nepal.
Like Ghimire, Nepali believes as well that the pandemic is likely to be taken up in future theater performances. He says that Karnali may be tackling the issue of violence toward the Dalit during the health crisis. As a writer, he wants to look at the issue of relief funds accessibility during the pandemic, saying “for a section of the society, the government and NGOs and INGOs were absent at that time.” ●
Kavita Raturi is an independent researcher; gender, politics, work, and migration are among her current issues of interest.
