Dr. Satyabrata Rout is a noted scenographer and director of contemporary Indian theatre. He completed his post-graduation in design and direction from the National School of Drama, New Delhi in 1983, and thereafter was associated with various institutions and organizations like Rangmandal, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, Theatre-in-Education Company, NSD Extension Programme, etc.

He is one of the pioneers in conceptualizing ‘Visual Theatre’ in India and has designed and directed more than 75 plays of international repute.

His recently published book is “Scenography: An Indian Perspective”. The Kolkata Mail’s correspondent Priyanka Dutta caught up with the author in an exclusive chat about his new book. Excerpts..

What is Visual Theatre?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Actors are the supreme authority of the performance. They are the only living operating tools in theatre that interact live. The engagement of theatre starts when an actor walks on the stage while an audience watches him. Someone or something has to walk or move on the stage in order to start a theatrical activity, which means ‘movement’ is the most essential component in making a theatre and it is to be visible to the viewer, either through the physical presence or through active imaginations. The movement of the actor on the stage is further empowered by the movement of the text and scenic visuals, etc. The movement of the text can be achieved through the dramatic renderings by the actor, in which he/she involves directly in the dramatic situation, but the movement of the inanimate objects such as, set, lights, masks, props, etc. which generally remain static during a performance is tricky.

There needs an urge of practicing a kind of theatre in which space and objects get animated and breathe into life by their interactions with the actors through sharing their mutual energy to form a major dramatic expression. With the mutual engagements of the actors and visual elements, theatre can be more meaningful, communicative, expressive, and political. This theatre genre must make itself free from the hegemony of the text and involve the audience in conceiving and interpreting the scenes/situations through their own life forces while watching the play. It must transform the theatre into a blissful visual experience for the audience and actors and animate the space into a live performance entity. This interactive performance of ‘actors, space, and objects’, can be termed as the ‘visual theatre’, which would provide unique experiences to the spectators and allow them to participate in the creative journey.

What is Scenography?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout-Theatre from its inception has been developed as an audio-visual medium. The Natyashastra terms it as ‘Drishya-Kavya’- visual-poetry, which means, ‘a poetry that is visible in a given space’. Scenography endorses Drishya- visuals prepare the ground for the Kavya- poetry to be visible for its audience and create scope to experience those visuals. Being an integral component of performance making, scenography precisely brings the opportunity to manifest the visuals through the ‘actor-audience-space’ integrations. The actors in collaboration with the ‘stage-space’ formulate a set of symbolic images to be transposed to the viewers’ minds, expanded, and realized through subjective interpretations. The audience is free to conceive, imagine, and comprehend those visual symbols by passing through his/her individual journey of life in accordance with the text, physical gestures, spatial compositions, sound and music, and through various stage symbols.

The responsibility of scenography is to guide the viewers to evoke those experiences with the help of a group of actors who amalgamate and animate the space into a living entity. Thus scenography orchestrates between actors, space, and audience by blurring the distinctive line of ‘creative practices’ (Actor’s physical presence, voice, direction, design, text, and viewership) and the ‘technical practices’ (sets, costumes, props, masks, managements, lights, sound, etc.) through a collaborative process.

With actors, it explores these creative and technical practices, successfully passes the visual experiences to the viewers’ imaginations, and initiates the journey along with the dramatic actions. To initiate the audience’s imagination and guide them through this journey, scenography explores possibilities through its various components, such as text, space, props, masks, sets, lights, sound, costumes, etc. Like a piece of sculpture, the three-dimensional stage space is cut into horizontal, diagonal, and vertical planes and sections through the actors’ physical and oral presentation to bring out the best possible visuals (real and imaginary), enriched with kinesthetics. Through this process, a narrative is constructed in time and space dimensions- interchangeable, and symbiotic within animate (actors) and inanimate (space and design) elements of the performance, playing with the spectators’ imaginations. Therefore, scenography forms the visual lexicon of the performance. It is the art of visual writings of the stage space that is readable through the eyes like paintings, sculptures, and other visual arts in time and space dimensions with a difference.

How did the concept of writing this book come to you?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Hardly any documentation available on scenography with an Indian orientation that Indian theatre has been craving for a practical treatise in this regard for quite a long time. Apart from a few interviews or memoirs of productions that pop up in the columns of a newspaper supplement or the pages of a magazine, nothing substantial has yet been brought out.

Scenography has been largely redefined in the West by bridging the void between designers and directors in the recent past. But it is a sad truth to acknowledge that such an ideology, which had a profound influence upon its immediate world, has not yet been re-modeled and chiseled to suit the Indian scenario. Despite having a considerable number of creative theatre-makers and scenographers with international acclamation, Indian theatre lacks proper documentation of the works of our masters.

With all the resources, we have failed miserably, beyond words, to theorize our practices to date. It is at this juncture, the idea of conceiving a book on this perspective germinated in my mind to showcase its uniqueness. Among the many things this book pioneers, the most prominent one is the analytical visual descriptions of the masterpieces of Indian play productions.

Going back to the early 80s, the term ‘Scenography’, was very much missing from the academic scene, which left us with nothing other than ‘Scenic design’ to perch on. Ironically, these terms carry different connotations.   While the former deals with the entire space and its visual vocabulary inclusive of the actors and the audience, the latter emphasizes the spatial arrangements of the play and is more related to its technical aspects. However, they complement each other and upon reaching a certain juncture, they intermingle to form a single entity. But lack of proper resource materials kept us ignorant about the current trends of world scenography. The available materials in those days were based on western practices with references from western productions and plays. To understand them, it becomes mandatory to be aware of those productions. The longing for a book that reviews the themes from an Indian perspective has turned out to be an overwhelming urge in me. Perhaps it is this impetus that provided momentum for bringing out this research document. I was always dreaming of a book that talks about our theatres, narrates our productions, depicts the visual imageries that are emerged out of our traditions, and sketches out the forms and colors of Indian cultures and design.

I do not know exactly when and how I stepped into this mesmerizing world of theatrical visuals, perhaps the missing link can be traced in my childhood creativity. When I adopted teaching Design and Direction in various theatre workshops and group theatres after graduating from the National School of Drama in the early 80s, I found most of my students were from the remote corners of India with no background in theatre vocabulary. Most of them were completely ignorant of the western trend of performance design. Western plays remained alien to these peripheral practitioners. At the same time, formulating a concept out of the popular Indian productions was a difficult task for me. Especially in design, since no reference materials were available related to Indian theatre. So, I started teaching out of my personal working experiences. In the beginning, it was arduous to develop a definite tone, but gradually over the period, the teaching methodology advanced into systematic order.

Gradually in the process of teaching, I developed a passion to conceptualize various methods which I have come across in my profession. I started working on the first draft of this book after I joined the Department of Theatre at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. But sooner I realized, my experiences and working knowledge are not adequate enough to bring out an outstanding reference book that covers all aspects of theatre arts and design. A break was inevitable to gain more ideas about theatre history, architecture, art and design, and culture as a whole. The more and more I referred to the available materials on Indian theatre criticism and productions; I revitalized myself to restart this massive work.

What kind of research did you undertake to write this book? 

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Writing a book on Indian performance design and scenography is not an easy job, since the field is vast with hardly any available reference materials. At this juncture of time, my working experiences and practices served as the primary source of my research. Fortunately, I have a wide range of fieldwork with almost all Indian eminent practitioners, institutions, group theatres, and professional repertories of the country. Also, I have acquired an understanding of Indian classical, traditional, and folk theatres and observed them from close proximities.

My long associations with the most eminent theatre personalities of India such as Havib Tanvir, Ebrahim Alkazi, B.V. Karanth, R.G Bajaj, Prof. Raj Bisharia, Dr.Nissar Allana, Ratan Thiyam, K.N. Panikar, Prof. Ankur, Prof. Bansi Kaul, Prof. Robin Das, Dr. Anuradha Kapoor, Dr.Neelam MansinghChawdhury, etc., helped me a lot to analyze and assimilate there practicing methods on Scenography and performance design into this book.

Moreover, interviewing these personalities repeatedly, opened many undiscovered chapters that were conceptualized in my writings. In fact, some of those interviews are kept in their original forms in this book to make the readers aware of their process. I had to plunder libraries and research centers such as the National School of Drama Library, Indira Gandhi Centre for Arts, NatarangPratisthan, NatyaShodhSansthan, etc. to identify materials related to my research. I have collected many archival materials and production photographs, brochures, etc., from various repertories and group theatres for this book.

My research included finding written resources of this subject from various journals and magazines, such as The Rang-prasang, Natarang, Theatre India, The Seagull quarterly, etc. I had gathered related paper reviews of various reputed Indian productions either through personal relations or through the internet for this purpose.

An important aspect of this book is the study of Indian ancient theatres, various performance spaces, folk, and traditional performances, in which I have extensively covered their scenographic atmosphere. Repeated visits to these sites, ruins, and caves, watching various traditional, folk, and popular theatres, traveling across the country and analyzing their performance design and technics, and finally assimilating all these materials into writings through a scenographic vision, took more than 12 (twelve) years for its completion. These years taught me to focus on the subject with a good deal of patience. More than writing a book, it is the knowledge and information that I received over these years, I cherish.

I hope this book will be helpful for the readers to acquire first-hand information about many interesting aspects of Indian theatre-making and performance design. Indeed, this book will be a good reference to the practitioners, scholars, and students and certainly will orient the young minds for scenography across the globe and make them understand the performance traditions of India and the Orient.

How can Scenographers contribute to the world of theatre in India? At what point during the course of the play do they pitch in?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Unfortunately Indian theatre has not yet completely awakened to such an interesting creative art form. The general practices across the country are yet to assimilate scenography into their productions. Out of a few Indian scenographers and designers, who have acquired in-depth study of the subject are mainly directors who use to conceive their own performance design. In most of the practices, scenography remained untouched by labeling it as costly affairs. Therefore, the potential of scenography is not yet been fully explored in Indian theatre but has gradually gained momentum in recent years.

Keeping aside its technical aspects, scenography is emerging as a concept in most of the academic productions in India, whose influence is clearly visible in contemporary practices in the twenty-first-century productions. Exploration of various kinds of performance spaces, creating scope for audience and actor integrations, emphasizing visual aesthetics, developing awareness for design and visual interpretations are some of the areas that are gradually being adopted into contemporary Indian theatres. This becomes possible due to the practicing methods adopted by our Indian scenographers.

Scenography, being an applied form of visual art needs constant interactions with the dramatic text from the beginning of the process. It grows day by day with the production through actor-space integration, merging into the style of presentation. Therefore, it is essential to involve scenography from the beginning of the process. Indian theatre is yet to create adequate space to incorporate this creative art form into its performance design.

How does a scenographer work in a world that is filled with easily accessible mediums such as digital banners and electronic backdrops?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Of course, it is challenging, but working in both mediums remains exciting for a scenographer. Both the medium- ‘digital’ and ‘live’, have their possibilities and limitations which a scenographer must understand prior to working in these mediums. While the live medium always remains three-dimensional and interactive, the digital medium is two-dimensional with one-way communication. This has to be taken into consideration while designing a production.

Today’s world is more accessible to digital and electronic mediums. One can get everything without going out from his house; everything is served over the table, easily. But the purpose of scenography is different. It is not to provide any spectacular visuals in front of your eyes and make you a passive observer, it creates an experience of being within that atmosphere and happenings. It arouses among the audience the stimuli of being an active participant of the event through human imaginations, which an electronic medium may not provide. Moreover, The actor- audience communion in a given space and their interactions solve many social issues that a digital or electronic medium can not resolve. That is why theatre being a visual medium is universal that lives and talks in the present time

What next? Can there really be a formal curriculum for a subject like scenography without compromising improvisations and creativity?

Dr. Satyabrata Rout- Scenography is an applied form of art having a direct link with its parental form- ‘visual arts’. For a scenographer its mandatory to acquire an in-depth understanding of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other visual mediums. Also, without a skilled background in theatre practice, this can not be achieved, which means a scenographer needs to be an expert in both art forms. That is why we have a few scenographers in the world.

Scenography as a formal subject of specialization has already been introduced in the curriculum in some of the Indian Universities and institutions, such as the University of Hyderabad and the National School of Drama, etc. But unfortunately, the course often faces many compromising situations due to the lack of trained teachers of scenography in India. Being a teacher of scenography at the University of Hyderabad, I always felt the scarcity of reference materials and books on Theatre design and scenography in the Indian context. The recently published book “Scenography: An Indian Perspective” is the outcome of my continuous search for relevant Indian performance design. Hopefully, this book will inspire young minds to adopt scenography as a prospective career and institutions to introduce Scenography as a major focus of study.