How to Fold a Paper Crane

First find a sheet of paper – search for it with determination
You’ll find it, I promise.
Like I found a Macbeth to become Mozart.
An Ariel for spiritual music.
Two pillars to support the lofty ideas.
Be innovative:
Shy vernacular newspaper looks amazing.
Just like hardworking actors with linguistic hesitation.
Trust me, they’ll look splendid.
So does un-textured new paper
which claims to know nothing - having no creases,
But this will give you the most crisp crane.
Then, hold a corner and fold it,
Crease it firmly and cut out a square.
See, we begin with a square with four corners.
Like those four colleagues who stood by you from the beginning.
And don’t forget the four equal sides,
Be open to equality – let first years write your script,
let second years add dramatic, new details.
But ensure that the crease is exactly where you envisioned it.
Now fold it into a triangle -
Yes, the one with three ends.
Name one acting, the other music and the last one production.
Get people to ensure that the crease is definite.
Now, another triangle – add nuances
Go for detailed nomenclature – sets, costumes and props.
Collapse the edges and make a square-
No, you are not moving in circles.
There will be times when you’ll feel
that nothing is evolving.
But have faith on your paper,
your shapes, creases, corners – they’ll guide you.
Its like germination -
it looks the same but it is growing rapidly.
Join the open sides and fold the closed ends –
it now looks like a flower bud.
But don’t be lazy – you want a crane not a bud.
Be patient – even though panic is surfacing.
Make two more creases and then -
open it.

It will look almost futile -
your paper will start groaning.
Like the actors did when they got bored of exercises
and meditation and character development.
But tell them the logic behind the creases,
tell them to trust your process -
Origami is all about the process.
Like theatre.
And now comes the tricky bit -
the collapse.
Take a leap of faith and go ahead,
make the square collapse into a diamond.
Use all your skills – individual and collective.
Ensure that the folds are exact.
Get a George with two stud henchmen.
Get a Sachu. Get masks couriered.
Make the two pillars take a lot of weight.
You must test your creases and folds.
Ensure that you remember everything you’ve done.
Documentation helps.
And now fold the legs and make then pointed,
sharpen the details.
Like stalling the runs and doing individual work.
Getting tailor-made costumes,
specific make-up.
Rejecting posters till you get what you want.
Cauliflowers are not what you want.

Then give the legs a crisp, angular fold,
Things will be in control now.
Invert the legs sideways and tuck them in.
You can almost see your crane taking shape.
The pillars have been sturdy, the painting is here.
So are the lights and the songs and Shravya’s sets.
Helen is also over – the dancing should begin now.

But I prefer a flying paper crane and so:
Fold the diamond and you’ll get wings,
Make the crease not in the middle but slightly lower,
aesthetics and logic might not be congruent.
But you have your paper crane.
Display it and the audience
will help you give the final tiny fold.
This fold becomes the head.
At times it doesn’t look like one.
But its like the first show -
relax and adjust the folds.
Resting on your palm is a paper crane.

Now, give it to me.
I’ll have your crane.
It’s mine now.
You can have my Sabha.
It’s yours.


- Chhayankdhar Singh Rathore

‘Mithya’ and Some Factual Myths.

Somewhere in the middle of December, shivering under the coldness of the happenings around, I called up Rahul in greed of some warmth from his relatively hotter surroundings. Expecting ‘Hello’, my ears were instead greeted with a pretty long sentence. “I have found the script I was looking for. I am directing it,” said a loud voice from the other side, probably enthusiastic.

The satire which was being ferociously searched for had at last been found. The catch was Mark Twain’s famous short story, ‘Is he Dead or Alive.” The conversation didn’t last long. I didn’t want it to. Marx would have agreed with my action. But somehow I found myself back in Delhi after a couple of days and a meeting with Rahul ensued.

The idea of artist and the behavior of the society towards him did interest him a lot and that could be gauged by the zeal he showed while describing the plot. A day earlier, Anjini, Siddharth and Rahul had come to a table and, astonishingly enough, had come up with the basic structure of the play. I was handed the script and I began running my eyes through it. A story of a painter, who fakes his death in order to make survival for him and his friends possible, is really thought giving. The fabricated death leads the painter to enormous fame and wealth in the same society which was about to starve him and his friends to death. But all this also comes at the cost of his identity and talent.

‘Indifference of society’ and ‘recognition of a dead artist’ has numerous testimonies in India, the most prolific being that of legendary painter, M.F. Hussain. ‘The Picasso of the East’, as he was famously called, was forced into exile by the same society which garlanded him once he passed away. As the session came to a closure, I could visualize the play in front of me. I could visualize the story of Francisco Millet on stage. Oh! It’s Sabha. Sorry, it’s Rashid Siddique.

Soon the New Year had its first dawn and after two more commenced our college after the winter break. The preparation of the play started with it too. Everyone was busy in making what came about in the chilliness of winter break into a hot reality on the stage. Logistics and pre-production were the first to be set in motion. Room bookings, hall bookings, sets and props were initially decided and then foot was set on the ‘inevitable’ part – casting.

Casting took some time, as it was meant to. Basit, Ankit, Anushrut, Sukrit, Harshit, Rupesh, Shinjini, Christopher, Faizan and Siddharth were given the shoes to fill into. Some did that effortlessly, some had to wear additional things in order to fit in and for some, sizes were too large to handle. After a week of ups and downs, approvals and denials, shouting and advice, practice and more practice, visions and blindness, critics and admirers, despair and hope, the show was put up.

The shows went well and audience did seem to enjoy it. They also did, really, get a hold of the concept which the play was trying to portray.  This is a conclusion drawn from their applause, which I witnessed as a part of it. The brilliant concept and its successful execution received its due after all.

- Muhammad Mutahhar Amin

Proverbial Lie

They say, “The whole world is a stage.”  What a lie.

The experience of the world is completely different from the experience of stage. The world, with all its earthly hassles of survival and establishing an identity, moulds humans into robotic structures running the rat race. The essence of society is that it ‘dehumanizes’ the soul by restricting it inside a bag of bones, which must act in accordance with socially acceptable norms of ‘dehumanized’ human behaviour. Why do I call it ‘dehumanization?’ Let me explain.

The ‘human’ element of our lives rests in the ability bestowed upon us by biology, or the Almighty, as you choose to believe, to create. Animalistic behaviour is associated with the notion of destruction. It is fair to assume that the reverse should hold true for ‘human’ like behaviour. Hence, creativity, in a sense, defines our humanness. But then, society is unleashed on our creativity. It is not a mere coincidence that a lot of creative geniuses have had an early end to flourishing careers in music and acting owing to lifestyle choices that can be described as self-destructive, at best. Society imprisons free spirit in a manner which allows only the body to thrive, along with a battered soul which cries out for its release from bondage. That release has been sought by means of substance abuse by various creative humans in the past. Hence, the idea of ‘dehumanization’ of the soul in society.

LIGHTS!

Welcome to the stage. No rules. No holds barred. No imprisoning of the soul. Freedom to explore layers of creativity. Human.

The stage allows us to live a character. It allows creativity to be expressed through a third party, the character portrayed. It is amazing that the minute lights come on, we cease to be ourselves. We become the character. Rather, the character becomes us. Actors often feel like they are living the life of the character on stage, however, it is the character which is then living our life. Our body becomes the character’s medium of expression, and not our medium of portrayal of the character. This is the joy of theatre. The blurring of lines between the actor and the character fulfils the purpose of creativity. There is, on the one hand, expression of creativity, and on the other, negation of the dehumanization which society imposes.

The interesting bit, therefore, is the lens through which one views theatre. From the actors’ and the directors’ point of view, the stage is a world of expression. From a character’s point of view, the actor, and not the stage, is a medium of expression, while the stage is its world of existence. The stage ‘humanizes’ the character by providing it with the actors’ bodies. The actors’ souls merge with those of the character and the body manifests the energy of the two. The humanness is at its expressive best.

The whole stage is a world.

- Soutik Banerjee

Welcome to the Rangmanch

Namaskar! The Shakespeare Sabha of St. Stephen’s College welcomes you in our exploration into the various aspects of the marvellous world of the Rangmanch.

We believe that every aspect of this realm and the ones outside it can be lived in the microcosmic universe which we refer to as the stage or the Rangmanch. The Rangmanch is not merely a performance space but a sacred space where many rules of this world bow down in front of the energy of theatre. It is a space where the mundane becomes the divine and yet the notion of divinity is put under scrutiny - it is the reflection of the society and yet the champion of social revolution. It has been nourished for eons by the state and the civilization and yet from it were born the seeds of the end of those civilizations and the collapse of that state. The Rangmanch becomes the mouthpiece of the subaltern whose tongues have been uprooted – it projects what is unheard. It pulls aside the curtain of ignorance and brings truth in the spotlight. It liberates the individual from the tyranny of life and death as a character dies in a show only to live again in the next show.

The Shakespeare Sabha strives relentlessly to unravel and learn from every aspect of this Rangmanch – we work with proscenium theatre, open-air theatre, street theatre as well as experimental ventures like the currently-germinating concept of a vertical stage experiment. We believe that the Rangmanch is the Rangbhoomi – the Karmabhoomi.

Heptullah.

- Chhayankdhar Singh Rathore

Secretary (Shakespeare Sabha)