Theatre Across Borders review: Abhishek Majumdar’s memoir unravels an often interrupted playwright’s dazzling inner workings
Published by Bloomsbury, Theatre Across Borders is a detailed account of Abhishek Majumdar’s inspiring journey with his plays that are lauded but also run into controversies
By Reema Gowalla
Rating: ****
Just before picking up Abhishek Majumdar’s new book Theatre Across Borders, I had read two memoirs one after the other. First, Salman Rushdie’s Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, in which the Booker Prize-winning author lays bare the distressing details of a tumultuous recovery period after he was stabbed 15 times during a literary event in upstate New York in 2022, leaving him blind in one eye. Second, Patti Smith’s Just Kids that details the poet-punk rock legend’s struggles in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s as she also navigated a complicated relationship with the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Both these books are deeply moving, as they spotlight the incredible strength and focus of the writers who remained steadfast amid adversities, grief and even exile. Theatre Across Borders also makes a similar impression and a little more. It’s an extraordinary account of the inner workings of a playwright, who believes in living the truth before writing about it, and while doing so has often risked his own life.
Observant, fierce and succinct, Abhishek adopts the autobiography style of writing to elucidate his journeys, thoughts and experiences that have shaped the making of The Djinns of Eidgah and Pah-La — two remarkable plays that although lauded everywhere were quick to run into controversies. Anyone who has watched Abhishek’s plays or engaged in a conversation with him would know the depth and nuance of his oeuvre. Apart from the intent and understanding of the subject matter, the writer-director also has a fair knowledge of how his play will make an impression on the psyche of the audience. According to him, it’s not enough for theatre to hold a mirror up to society. “It’s extremely vital that theatre becomes an X-ray machine, which not only shows our cosmetics but also our bones”. He demonstrates a sense of agency as he questions state policies, narrates stories of conflict zones and recreates the fear and fragility of human lives on stage with accuracy and empathy.
Thus, ‘Brecht in Kashmir’ and ‘The Writing of Pah-la: A Theatre Journey across the Roof of the World’ offer the most curious and unsettling read. The portions describing his constant preoccupation with the late Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali, his conversations at a local tea shop in Srinagar when the curfew eases off, doing a series of interviews after landing in China and boarding the Beijing to Lhasa Train to ‘finally’ reach Tibet are illuminating and nerve-racking in equal measure. That said, the playwright didn’t undergo all that just to gather material for his scripts. He believed: “There are many persons in a person. What I am looking for is not information. I am looking for a shared presence.” Abhishek’s fateful encounter with a young fan of Bertolt Brecht in Srinagar and his tribute to little Rinzin, whom he remembered “for his gorgeous laughter, broken English and beautiful Tibetan” are poignant narratives of the human cost of decades-long territorial disputes, political schism and historical negationism.
Published by Bloomsbury, Theatre Across Borders is essentially divided into three parts — ‘Home’, ‘Away’ and ‘Other Geographies’. It’s a father’s wish to see his daughter “growing up in a world with less borders and more art”. There’s a sense of discomposure as he determinedly transcends boundaries to comprehend how young minds that thrive in art and literature can also resort to pelting stones; how even after years of living in exile, one chooses to not share their grief and abide by their faith in “nonviolent resistance”.
Before discussing Kashmir and Tibet, Abhishek ponders on the role of tradition, language, enterprise and travel in understanding theatre as an art form. The early chapters are a treasure trove of his childhood memories in Delhi, where he had spent his days within the premises of the sprawling Jawaharlal Nehru University. There are frequent mentions of Ramlila, Habib Tanvir’s rehearsals and dramas performed during Durga Pujo. The recollections of his elder sister not letting go of his hand in the crowd, bicycle rides with his father and music lessons from his mother give a peek into the author’s own formative years and at the same time put his love for theatre in perspective.
Abhishek is constantly reading while travelling. In fact, Theatre Across Borders is punctuated by several references to books (Anne Bogart’s A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre, George C Wolfe’s The Coloured Museum), authors, theatre personalities (Elyse Dodgson), his friends and colleagues (Sandeep Shikhar, Irawati Karnik, Lhakpa Tsering, Jocelyn Clarke). His commentary is laced with a philosophical undertone, while the narrative remains engrossed with real people, their emotions and sufferings. Abhishek is at once a drama teacher at a Tibetan camp, a detective tiptoeing the back alleys of Beijing and a journalist who religiously gets a quote cross-checked by the source before publishing it. Simply telling a story about a place where very few men go is not enough for him. He believes in going beyond the superficial picture of a place. Be it about going back to the Valley “on a quest for a point of view” during the making of Gasha, a play that predominantly aimed at “capturing the trauma of Kashmiri Pandits” or revisiting Gazipur district in Bangladesh to find out if there was more to the story of Hamidur Rehman — the protagonist of a documentary play — who died in Germany while seeking asylum as a political refugee.
His own learnings and thoughts jostle for space as he continues to travel and experience different worlds that finally translate to his scripts. Many are aware of the death threats, hostilities and censorship that Abhishek faced while staging his plays in India and abroad. This book, however, provides a rare glimpse of how the father of a little girl dealt with such problems in life, when even sending her off to school for a few hours became a risk. Yet with all the rancour and a “busted eye”, he remained resolute and unswerving, because: “Theatre has always been a place where the voiceless has found voice. It is extremely important that in times to come these voices are heard more and these faces become more visible.” He also insists that reading groups in theatre shouldn’t always meet indoors. “They need to be read while travelling, because if theatre remains fixed, it will become exactly what it tries to overthrow.”
The essays and analyses in Theatre Across Borders were partly written during the pandemic. So, the book also mentions Abhishek’s three plays — Raashan, Namak and The Najma Trilogy — which were penned as a response to the plight of the people in India “who were below the surface of our society and whose dignity was compromised” as the country grappled with Covid-19. While many in the art circuits then prophesied online theatre as the “next best thing”, he felt that actually “no one who really needed the healing most urgently or the questioning of the system could access those plays”. The chapters ‘Lessons in Pausing: From a theatre in West Africa to a Monastery in the Himalayas’, ‘On Censorship’ and ‘The Enterprise’ are thematic and deserve special mention for their relevance in making plays.
As a playwright, Abhishek follows a strict writing ritual that begins in the early hours of the day. He describes himself as “militantly atheist”, but as part of his research work he has often dabbled in Tibetan Buddhism, Hindu scriptures and Quranic exegesis. During the writing of Pah-La, he even had an audience with the Dalai Lama. The portion, titled ‘Meeting His Holiness’, is profound to say the least. In the author’s words, that conversation made him feel “deeply rewarded for being a theatremaker”.
Overall, Theatre Across Borders documents the journey of a playwright-director whose pursuits are often interrupted, yet his light remains undimmed. Abhishek writes his memoir with brevity but not bereft of wit and poise. Despite being meditative, he maintains a clear gaze throughout the layered narrative. The book is too intimate to be dubbed a guide for aspiring theatremakers. What comes out more prominently is a storyteller’s unfailing resilience and a dazzling passion for the art form. In that, there is a lesson for every reader.
You can order a copy of the book here.
