Schools in Kathmandu and in other cities of Nepal find it very costly to construct a separate building for inculcating in their students a culture of staging modern plays or performances on a regular basis. Technical gadgets and creative minds are prerequisites to create performances. However, gadgets needed in modern theater halls are very expensive. This is one of the reasons why most schools in Kathmandu are forced to hire theater halls located at different parts of the city.
Without a theater space, how are our children then going to learn to act, dance and perform? What could be some possible means to acquire resources required for creating theatrical performances at school? How can we expect each school to own a theater hall at a time when even major theater groups in Nepal do not have any venues to perform? Moreover, almost all theater halls run by the government in Kathmandu and elsewhere have revealed to us that they are very difficult to manage. They look deserted and barren as they mostly remain idle. Artists working for government-owned theater centers have not been able to create even a single performance for years. Above all, most schools even in the capital city do not even have proper buildings to run regular classes, let alone owning a theater hall of their own.
Theater, no doubt, can become one strong medium for disseminating local arts and cultural forms of expressions among the school-going children.
The aesthetic charm, on the one hand, and the economic burden associated with modern theater, on the other hand, has led to a flawed understanding of modern theater art in Nepal. We have always conceived theater in the form of a huge building equipped with sophisticated gadgets and technologies handled by creative manpower trained in the modern Western theater pedagogy. As a result, we have found ourselves beset with constraints caused by the very formalistic i.e. architectural and technological features of modern proscenium theater.
Nepal as a nation state during the Panchayati rule in the sixties and seventies seemed to have accepted the model of Western proscenium theater as one of the surest means to meet the target of modernizing its theater art along with literature. A new generation of artists and writers tried to use and explore this medium of art to liberate their societies and the selves. But in no time have their followers found themselves with economic, architectural and technological problems of modern proscenium theater. This must be taken as an important realization for the future modern performance culture and education in Nepal.
The fact of the matter is that theater has always remained one of the most easily available mediums of expression for human beings. It is believed that human beings started to act and dance i.e. create art since the very dawn of civilization. This has given rise to a realistic belief that projected theater art is/was a local phenomenon in its spirit. This also sounds very true to Nepal, a multi-ethnic country where each cultural community has nurtured different sets of performative art and cultural forms for ages. Children in local communities in Nepal grow up learning songs and dances. When they start going to school, they naturally develop a set of notions about local performance culture. Therefore, schools in Nepal need to nurture theater that is uniquely local and a part of the people who they institutionally as well as economically depend on.
Recently, the Bangladesh Center of International Theater Institute organized an international seminar in Dhaka. Theater experts from South Asia gathered in Shilpokala Academy from Nov 5 to 9 to discuss about some possible ways of launching theater education in school curricula. Participants and discussants in the seminar agreed on a common point that theater art in this part of the world needs to go through a redefinition before it aims to reach out to students at the school level. This means theater practitioners in this part of the world need to accept a reality that theater art has survived in multiple forms in their nations.
Therefore, modern proscenium theater that is being nurtured by modern nation state and academia in this part of the world cannot be the only available medium for creating performances. This demands upon the theater practitioners to acquire expertise on multiple forms of theater, which have remained in practice for ages in the local communities. Moreover, they also need to realize that theater varies from one ethnic community to another especially in a country like ours. Therefore, they must show readiness to encounter theater in its multiple avatars.
Theater, no doubt, can become one strong medium for disseminating local arts and cultural forms of expressions among the school-going children. By introducing it at the school-level curricula, we can instill a new life into schools as these days schools are often criticized for practicing and promulgating textbook-centric or exam-oriented teaching methodologies. Even schools run by very creative minds seem to have given into the hegemony of the exam-oriented mainstream education pedagogy in Nepal. As a result, most of the students instead of exploring local cultural modes of expression and creativities that are deeply-rooted to their bodies and minds find themselves caught into a situation where they have no options other than memorizing lines or formulae from textbooks.
No one bothers about teaching them how to recite local myths and epics and perform dance and musical forms that are very much part of their lives and cultures. Therefore, we are going through a great loss as our local kids remain unfamiliar with local forms of art and cultural modes of expressions. Inserting theater education at school level means more than teaching local children how to dance and sing and act in local styles. It is in fact an effort to inculcate a culture of contemplation on the cultural and local modes of expressions. Such form of education surely will help us and our children to live in a globalized world that demands locals to remain vibrant and dynamic.
The Dhaka seminar revealed to me a stark reality that there are not many theater practitioners at the educational-policymaking level in Nepal. Theater practitioners in Nepal have remained one of the most marginalized communities. They look as if they are meant to remain sad and forlorn as the dramatic characters they bring to life onstage.
As I came across Asaduzzaman Noor, member of parliament as well as a famous theater actor, a cultural icon for Bangladeshi youths and other several senior theater artists, I realized that we in Nepal need to build up a similar cultural and intellectual force in order to install a new life in our education system in schools. Cultural and educational policymakers in Bangladesh, as the seminar revealed to me, have shown strong interests in formulating new educational pedagogy that will launch theater education at the school level curricula.
Theater is and was already with us through its existence in every community. But much depends on the pedagogues, the minds who feel the importance and beauty of theater that each community in Nepal lives with. Let us create a force that will give our children their theater back
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