Abhishek Majumdar: The Cross-Border Act

PLAYWRIGHT, scenographer and director Abhishek Majumdar is in Mumbai for the rehearsals of an upcoming Ambedkarite opera for which he has assembled a motley crew of new faces and long-time collab­orators. There is music being recorded, the room is alive with discussion, and actors are writing their own lines. At one point, Majumdar, the head of the theatre department at New York University Arts Centre, Abu Dhabi, says that the criticism of a character being talked about in the scene, is not strong enough. He believes that without such feedback, the charac­ter’s arguments seem weak.

These are early days, with daily rehearsals beginning only in January 2025. And yet Majumdar’s fixation with multiple narratives is apparent. “I am only interested in drama where there are multiple sides. It is good for the standing narrative to be questioned,” he says. This is a running thread in his book Theatre Across Borders, a memoir, published by Bloomsbury, last year. His other book, Collected Plays, (also Bloomsbury), will release in India next month. It features some of his widely acclaimed works; Pah-La, Mukitidah, Djinns of Eidgah, 9 Kinds of Silence, and Dweepa. This is his first play collection published in English.

The untitled Ambedkarite opera, in collaboration with Ambedkarite music group Yalgaar and Majumdar’s Nalanda Arts Studio, opens in February next year in Mumbai. The narrative is still in the making and Majumdar offers a summary. “It is about a person from a family with other Ambedkarites. It is his journey from choosing not to be participatory in the political movement,” he says, adding, “Do we recognise that caste is systemic? How does a society like ours deal with the caste system especially when coming from a dispossessed background? It is told through satire, music, and documentary elements. I would call it a documentary opera.”

Majumdar’s theatre has taken him to numerous conflict zones from Kashmir to Lhasa. And for the first time, a book details his process, in his own words. Theatre Across Borders is unlike the cerebral breakdown of an artist’s method one would expect it to be. It is a gentle, often simplistic, detailing of his quests and desires. Majumdar chooses to take the reader on a journey instead of a masterclass. His early memories of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in New Delhi, of the Ramlila Ground, Habib Tanvir’s rehearsals in the auditorium, and his mother’s nightly song are a warm introduction to his formative years.

Majumdar’s has been no ordinary journey. His work in theatre began with the outfit, Indian Ensemble, which he co-founded with writer and theatre maker Sandeep Shikhar. His quest for answers and new forms within the medium has catapulted him to interna­tional fame. His Kashmir Trilogy was the beginning of this acclaim. Since then, he has worked with theatres around the world, from the Theatre du Soleil, Paris, to the National Theatre, London, to the San Francisco Opera. He has won several awards including the first Shankar Nag Award, and the International Theatermakers Award, New York.

Majumdar’s foray into the arts came after science and mathematics in college. He recalls poring over inter­views in Mumbai Theatre Guide. “I was in NIT Trichy, and I would read Kumud Mishra’s interviews. I could have never imagined I would work with him twice over, and make plays in Marathi, Kannada, and Tibetan,” he says.

Before Majumdar was recognised the world over as a playwright and director, he chose to act on stage for nearly a decade. He recalls loving the theatre but being disgruntled with his role in it. In a poignant chapter in the book, he details his role as Hamidur Rahman, a Bangladeshi poet who died in exile in Germany. In the same chapter, he addresses a rehearsal room conflict that led him to retract from his role as a collaborator.

Majumdar’s is a memoir that speaks directly to its readers, about theatre tradi­tions, and the research and writing of his acclaimed Kashmir Trilogy, and Pah-La, a play about the Tibetan resistance. He recounts his travel to Lhasa, aboard the Lhasa Express, and later, a meeting with the Dalai Lama. A chance encounter with a young boy leads him to a Brecht reading room in Srinagar’s downtown. Even as politics forms the spine of the narrative, it is these recollections that make it a book to cherish.

Majumdar’s plays, he tells us, begin with a central quest. As he spends time researching the multiple sides of this question, sometimes at great personal cost, the narrative unravels. “If I think of content, there are two kinds of questions that interest me. One is the philosoph­ical like in Kaumudi (Majumdar’s play loosely inspired by the Mahabharata), or of Buddhism in Pah-la, and the many strands of Hinduism in the upcoming Vibhuti Rachnavali. The second is my interest in political questions; the Ambedakarite, Kashmir, or Tibet,” he explains. “I am interested in common people, not kings and queens, and how they live in these political systems without being aware of it. And what is their response to that?” he adds. Over the years that quest hasn’t changed, but it has developed a certain zeal with becom­ing a parent. “I see my daughter growing up in this world, with these questions.”

Majumdar in his book makes sense of his work over the years while inviting young artists into his process, with the generosity of an educator while main­taining the tone of a peer. He terms all theatre an attempt at patternmaking lik­ening it to mathematics, in fact, algebra. He rallies against Western methodology being transposed to other languages and cultures and makes a case for form and context rooted in the subject matter.

His failure and learnings are as much a part of the memoir as are his many accolades. His writing, he tells us, is for an artist of any age looking to make new and diverse work. “I am a big fan of the idea that art is a verb, it is not something you are born with, it is something you do,” he explains. Majumdar lavishes admiration on his collaborators and credits the very act of coming together to his success. “I learned how to collaborate in drama school. I do not think I am the best writer or director. But I am a compe­tent collaborator. Somebody always knows it better than the director. You have to recognise it,” he says.

After his literary outing in the form of a memoir, Majumdar awaits the publishing of his first novel, Radiodurans. Based on a true story, it is about an old woman who dies alone in her Delhi home and isn’t discovered until her first auto-debit payment is declined three months later. “We take great pride in caring for our old people, we are family oriented. When some­thing like this happens, who do we blame? It is an inquiry into violence and shame, through the lens of the woman and people around her,” he says.

Then there is a production of his play Vibhuti Rachnavali, due to open towards the end of the year, directed by actor Sukant Goel, with Kumud Mishra in the lead. “It is a monologue of a person who is a cook to Ramakrishna Paramahansa and does not want to believe in god. He is on a religious quest even though he denies it. It is a closer look at certain strands of Hinduism like Kshetra Yog,” he explains.

He is also working on a movement theatre piece in Brazil, with former classmate and movement artist Julietta Dobbin. “It’s based on a novella, and tells the story of the sole woman survivor of a city of coal mines that van­ished into the earth,” he says. Then there is Blood, Milk, and Water, a collaboration with an Irish theatre company, that looks at the bizarre trade of war debris. Majumdar is writing the play and is set to travel to Syria for research.

There’s also a prequel to Pah-La, a play on the Tibetan non-violent resistance, in the works. If Majumdar’s list of current projects seems unending, his wishlist of upcoming ones is even longer. “I want to work with actors Gopalan and Suresh Kaliyath on a Malayalam play. I also want to direct a nine-hour-long play that opens in the evening and continues through the night. I want to write and direct in Russia, with one of the reperto­ries. I want to do a children’s play. I want to do another play in verse,” he goes on. “Theatre is so exciting that even on the last day of my life there will be so much left to do”.

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