AUGUST 2018 F INDIA TODAY PUNJABI 15For six days and nights, he
was on the stage without
a break, and brought alive
more than 20 characters
from everyday life. There
was no bound script, and
improvisation was the name
of the game. From July 22
to July 28, his own self was
pushed in the background
somewhere while he was
engrossed in Ras Abhinay at
Tagore Theatre
in Chandigarh.
Chandigarh-based theatre
director and actor Chakresh
Kumar, one of the youngest
recipients of Ustad Bismillah
Khan Yuva Puruskar (2015),
says that while bringing to
stage the solo impulse
psychological journeys of
different characters, he
sometimes feared getting lost
in their darkness. “The whole
experience was satisfying but
also quite scary. After all,
taking on different person-
alities for so many days and
nights can leave one’s own
self bruised. Precisely, that
was the reason why I con-
sulted a doctor before making
this attempt,” he says.
This was for the first time
that someone attempted
something like this in the
region (Chandigarh, Punjab,Haryana and Himachal
Pradesh). The idea was not to
set a record or raise eyebrows
but to bring out the dormant
actor in him. “The past few
years have been about
directing plays and I prefer
not to act in the plays I
am designing and
directing. That cocktail
does not work for me,” says
this MA in theatre from
Panjab University (2007),
Chandigarh. Insisting that
theatre had always been
a spiritual reality for him
and through this endeavor,
he wanted to explore this
dimension further, Kumar
adds, “What I feel right now
is a certain catharsis. The
actor in me that had been
yearning to come out for
such a long time is no longer
hungry. Also, I have been
introduced to many unknown
facets of my personality,
which is the best part.”
Kumar, who has been part
of Punjab’s theatre scene for
the last 15 years, laments that
not much is being done for
the betterment of theatre.
Stressing that despite tall
claims of being a culturally
conscious state, no concrete
steps were being taken to
promote the same, heelaborates, “Leave alone the
very few grants and scholar-
ships, where are the plat-
forms and training systems?
There has to be more to
culture than just bhangra and
gidda, no?”
Acceptance did not come
easy for Kumar in this part of
the country. Blaming the
hollow arrogance of the
so-called veteran theatre
practitioners and members
of the art community in
Chandigarh, Kumar says, “It
has taken more than a decade
for people to acknowledge
me. Had I been welcomed
earlier in my career, I would
have done much better,
much earlier. It was only BN
Goswamy (art critic), Neelam
Mansingh Chowdhary (the-
atre director) and Atamjit
(playwright), who have been
supporting me since the very
beginning.”
Kumar, whose group
Alankar Theatre now has
its own costume bank and
library, and manages to pay
rents by organising street
plays, also runs actor-training
workshops. “We don’t expect
a fee from the trainees, they
just contribute. When the
state does little, one has to
improvise to survive,” he says.Feature
Six days of Going Solo
After performing non-stop for six days and nights, theatre actor Chakresh
Kumar wants to now concentrate more on experimental theatre_ By Sukant DeepakTHEATRE
Photographs by Sandeep Sahdev