Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Devendra Sharma
dialogue among its members. This dialogue engages community members and brings them
closer to each other. The closeness developed among members of a community, in turn,
developed in the public sphere are extremely important for generation and sustenance of a
sense of a shared world among its members. They also enhance mutual cooperation and
care within a community, which is critical for its holistic development and progressive
207), and vice versa. In this paper, I use illustrations from my field research in India and
broader level, I draw upon C.S. Lewis, Merilyn Friedman, Mikhael Bakhtin and Dwight
Conquergood’s ideas to explore the role of performance in creating the process of dialogue
and friendships within a community. Also, I build upon William Rawlins’s work to define
According to C.S. Lewis (1960), doing things together instills a feeling of cooperation and
corner stone of friendship. Although Lewis discusses the idea of companionship leading to
friendship in the context of dyadic or private friendship, I believe that the feeling of
Performance for Community Friendships 3
According to Lewis, there are many activities such as hunting, studying, painting,
etc. that generate a feeling of cooperation and companionship amongst the members of a
community. In this paper, I would like to discuss performance as an activity that not only
demands cooperation but also provides stimulation for people to relate with each other,
probably even more than other shared activities. I believe that performance, on a
community level, generates an active public dialogue among community members that
community that develops together, with its members “side by side: their eyes looking
ahead” (Lewis, 1960, p.98). I believe that dialogue generated by a public performance is
activity is more conducive for producing dialogue because it creates an enjoyable and
entertaining atmosphere where participants feel comfortable relating with each other.
eliminating recognizable biases, and for creating a caring society. According to her,
individual perceptions, due to their limited capacity to take perspectives of others, cannot
be trusted as means for building a fair and caring society. She points out: “As for the
methods for eliminating recognizable biases from critical moral thinking, foremost
reasons, each person’s unaided thinking cannot be trusted to discern its own biases” (p. 32).
Public dialogue brings people emotionally and intellectually closer, and helps them to form
Performance for Community Friendships 4
a shared sense of the world. However, Friedman also warns us that this dialogue must
involve the marginalized sections of a particular society, those who do not have enough
resources and status to participate and influence public dialogue. “Only in that way can
they have any hope of challenging the biased direction of public debate and its ensuing
However, it is easier said that done. How do we involve the less privileged in
public dialogue? How can we create situations where people come together without being
importance when we see biases prevailing around the world in spite of the spread of the
modern education, and practices and arrangements such as the caste system in India, and
I argue that performance occasions are among those rare opportunities where
people, even if temporarily, forget about the class, caste, and religious hierarchies and
participate together in a common activity. This participation helps them to feel affection
and equality towards each other, and over a period of time, hopefully, a sense of
“identification” (Burke, 1945/1969) across different hierarchies and groups due to various
and bonding among relatively less privileged groups in a society and can even play a
subversive role leading to a possible change in status quo. Of course there is also a danger
that performances can arguably be used to preserve oppressive traditions and reinforce
status quo. In the following section, I discuss performance impact of Nautanki, a popular
Performance for Community Friendships 5
folk musical theatre tradition of India, and poetry sessions in America in the context of
Michael Bakhtin’s ideas to show how performance can create dialogue, which leads to
public friendship.
potential tool for understanding the established and oppressive practices through social
dialogue. His notion of carnival celebrates liberation, even if temporary, from the
established order. He claims that the celebration of the carnivalesque helped remove the
hierarchical authority of the medieval church and state and replace it with humanism and
ordinary people create social and cultural events at local levels to express themselves. For
centuries, one of the roles of performance traditions in India, for instance, has been
precisely this, i.e. to provide common people creative ways to fight oppressive structures of
caste and feudal system, and create flexibility in them. Community performances try to
achieve this end not by preaching but by creating a space for people to have interaction
among themselves, and with their social and cultural environment. Folk performances
This interpersonal communication creates a bonding among people, which we can term as
between performance and the constitution of community; communities not only produce
but are produced by cultural performances. Let us take the example of Nautanki, one of the
most popular folk theatrical forms in Northern India, and discuss how its performances
evening and continue the whole night, concluding in the morning. In addition to providing
entertainment, Nautanki helps its audience construct a cultural language through which its
audiences make sense of their worlds. I have been a traditional Nautanki performer for last
Nautanki supports active public dialogue, which has a potential for social change. Nautanki
performances cover a wide range of narratives from religion to politics; from everyday life
to grand stories of emperors. These performances provide a common context for otherwise
varied social groups in terms of caste and class in India and prepares a ground for them to
explore something that is socially and culturally common. Gradually, when these diverse
groups get used to relate to each other via a common activity, i.e. participating in a
performance, they can potentially cooperate with each other to affect desired change in
their socio-political and economic environment. For instance, in a popular Nautanki titled
Srimati Manjari, a young Muslim man protects a young Hindu woman (whom he considers
his sister) from the tyranny of her spoiled husband. This Nautanki was immensely
Muslims in the early part of the twentieth century in parts of northern rural India (Agrawal,
1976). This social discourse can be understood as a rare instance of public friendship
between Hindus and Muslims communities, which otherwise have been known to have a
history of conflict in the 20th century in India. This kind of public friendship, formed across
communal groups through similar performances in various parts of India, helped to unify
Performance for Community Friendships 7
India against Britain and played an important role in gaining political freedom in the first
Kathryn Hansen, a Nautanki scholar, supports Bakhtin’s view when she claims
own community. It helps them in the vital construction of an ordered, meaningful world
interestingly, this order is not necessarily a linear one. It is an uncertain one, and offers
many choices to its audiences to decide among various courses of action. Here lies an
proactively used to start a social change discourse. In other words, a performance, through
a carefully written script, can provide a critical space for the co-creation of messages
performance forms like Nautanki, important tools of cultural & social education, more than
printed texts, particularly in the context of oral communication-based cultures such as rural
India that have limited literacy.1 The interaction with their environment and interpersonal
constitute and modify their social knowledge. This modification in social knowledge, may
lead to an attitude and behavioral change related with specific social issues. Let us try to
Formation of community friendships among young Indian men and women through
performance
1
Literacy rates in the North Indian states ranges from 47% to 70%, female literacy being as low as 34% in
some parts (Census of India, 2001).
Performance for Community Friendships 8
In the summer of 2007, my colleagues at Brij Lok Madhuri (BLM)2, New Delhi
India, Center for Media Studies3, New Delhi India, Saakar4 Foundation, Patna India, and
in the state of Bihar, India. Bihar is one of the poorest states in India with a very high
melas (entertainment fairs) that are common in Bihar. Prior to performances, folk experts
of BLM wrote a Nautanki script on HIV/AIDS and then trained performers (invited from
different villages) in a weeklong workshop. Participants ranged from 16-60 years in age,
with 4 females and 10 males. In June 2007, participants met daily from 9 am –5 pm in
Patna, the capital of Bihar to rehearse and discuss the script. After the workshop, four
performances in four different villages were done drawing an audience from 3000-5000
discussed various issues connected to HIV/AIDS and made vows to not to discriminate
against people infected with HIV/AIDS. They also discussed breaking the social taboos on
issues such as discussing sexual relationship with one’s partner frankly. Research shows
communities that were previously considered it as a taboo issue and hardly ever discussed
it. There were many instances during the performances where tears could be seen in the
eyes of audience members when they watched the plight of people with HIV/AIDS in their
2
Brij Lok Madhuri (BLM) is a non-profit organization in India which promotes social justice through folk
performances. BLM is led by the renowned Nautanki singer Pundit Ram Dayal Sharma.
3
A new Dlehi based research organization.
4
A non-profit organization in Bihar that provides health care to rural population.
Performance for Community Friendships 9
forming of strong friendships among the local performers. By the end of the performances,
many of these performers felt that they were not fighting alone for change in the rigid
traditions of their society but were part of a strong team, and were efficacious to take on
many wrong social practices such as unequal treatment of boys and girls, child marriage,
substance abuse and dowry in their community. Many of them exchanged each other’s
contact information, and promised to remain in touch, and keep doing activities like these
performances in future on their own. Many of the participants, threw little parties after the
Performers emphasized the value of friendships formed through the workshop and
I am glad to see the people who did this project and some of my friends who had
come from other places. I didn’t know them earlier but during the program we
From the very beginning, I felt comfortable in the workshop. I knew we were going
to meet strangers [performers coming from other places], but I trusted you to take
us somewhere safe and good for us. Seeing the other participants, they looked like
us and behaved like us . . . they were equally lost (laughter). But I know that now
we have a relationship forever. We will definitely invite them to our village and
achieved through the confidence of having friends with similar thoughts. The potential of
Performance for Community Friendships 10
and opportunities of its transformation in social change rises high as we will see in another
to Indian society though. We can see similar effects of performances in other cultures too,
including American. “Voice open stages” in US are good examples of performance leading
performance sessions at Donkey. Donkey is a coffee shop in Athens, Ohio. More than a
coffee shop, Donkey is a fun place where not only Ohio University students but also the
residents of Athens come to socialize. It has a warm and friendly atmosphere. The voice
sessions in Donkey take place every week on Tuesdays from 9 pm onwards. They are
organized in the back room of the coffee shop, which has ample space for around 50 people
to sit comfortably. Most of the voice sessions are “house-full”. The performers sign up at
around 8.30 pm, i.e., around half an hour before the commencement of the session. One by
one, performers come on the stage (a raised platform in the room) and read out their pieces.
These pieces range widely from poems to excerpts from novels, diary, and short stories. A
performers to audiences. Both performers and audiences at these sessions find this
atmosphere conducive to connect with others like them. One performer sees these sessions
I guess it is about so many people watching me. It is just a fun feeling. To be able
to be out there... I have sat in the crowd before, and you look on stage and you say
Performance for Community Friendships 11
that, oh they are having such a good time. I wish I could be up there. When you are
One can see a clear realization in the above statement of the desire to connect with
others. It is interesting to see how in a relatively more individualized society like US, the
voice sessions such as the one in Donkey, facilitate construction of a community by way of
providing a platform to people to relate to each other, exchange ideas, get accepted by each
It is a good way to meet new people and make friendships and also a good way to
kind of (get) tuned on to new ideas and different things because some of the people,
the points that they bring up here are new to me or that I don't agree with, or I do
agree with, and I think hearing their point of view is helpful to kind of see a little
bit on the other side of the fence. You know what I mean? So I really enjoy that too.
An important point to note in the above statement is the spirit to learn new things
and modifying one’s subjective thinking by making new friends and understanding their
point of view. This clearly happens due to the dialogue among participants stimulated by
these performance sessions. The development of the capacity to take others’ perspective,
cooperation.
voice open stage performers was performance’s potential of empowering people. This goes
back to the Friedman’s concern for involving disempowered people in public dialogue
Performance for Community Friendships 12
mentioned earlier in this paper. Many people whom I interviewed during my study said that
they felt empowered by performing in front of people. Just the fact that many people were
listening to them and they were the center of attention was itself empowering. This
empowerment dimension was especially important and more visible for the performers
who belonged to marginalized groups and cultural minorities. One of our interviewees, a
black performer, expressed the empowering dimension of performance very well in the
following words:
For a long time, people of color in this country were not really allowed to perform
so what happened was that whites dawned black face to perform as black. So does
discussed effectively by Scott Dillard (2002) in his review of books focusing on the poetry
festivals and poetry slams in United States. Reviewing Bill Moyers’ book, Fooling with
word: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, he quotes one of the poets Mark Doty that
captures the desire of relating to others through performance: “I find great hope in the
sense of connection with other people, the possibility that the worst experiences might be
transformed into a place where we might meet and stand together” (p.220). According to
Dillard, The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, discussed in Moyers’ book “seems to be
a celebration of many ‘ones’ joining together into a community” (p.220). Dillard brings to
our attention many other instances in the Moyers’ book focusing on how poet and
audience, and audiences among themselves, come together through the performance of
poetry. The following observation of poet Kurtis Lamkin about the community
Performance for Community Friendships 13
participation in poetry festivals is very apt to show us how performance works as a carnival
where people come together and enjoy. This observation brings our attention back to the
That’s the beautiful thing about being here at this festival. They call it a festival, but
it’s like a carnival-and you’re the ride! It is really interesting. One person in the
audience may be thinking about where he parked the car and how he’s going to get
out after the event. Someone else may be thinking about that appointment she has
with the dentist tomorrow. But sooner or later you feel their minds and yours are
characteristic of friendship. When people start feeling close to each other, a part of a
through this process same as dyadic friendships? What do we mean when we say “we made
friends at the performance” as opposed to our personal or private friends with whom we
share the intimate details of our lives. It is clear that community friendship or in other
though they share many characteristics. William Rawlins (1992) provides us a useful
this in the context of dyadic friendship, many of the characteristics he describes can be
applied to public friendships also. According to him, close dyadic friendships in American
culture are: voluntary, personal, have spirit of equality, mutual, and affective (Rawlins,
Performance for Community Friendships 14
1992, pp. 11-12). Obviously, the personal nature of dyadic friendships can not be part of
public friendships, though personal friendships can emerge from people’s involvement in
performances. However, we will focus ourselves here on friendships that develop not
between two individuals but among many individuals. Out of the above characteristics of
dyadic friendship, I believe equality and mutuality are integral part of public friendships
also. Moreover these two characteristics might also lead, over a period of time, to another
service. Let’s discuss how performance facilitates the development of these features of
public friendships.
Equality
As Rawlins says, “although friendship may develop between individuals of different status,
ability, attractiveness, or age, some facet of the relationship functions as a leveler” (p.11).
During community performances, the performative process itself functions as the leveler.
performance. In that moment they are all members of audience enjoying, laughing and
together become a team. Every single performer, his or her social background
Mutuality
co-creation of messages between the performer and the audience. Performance, therefore,
this interpretation and discourse, performance takes its performers and audience to another
plane in which the performer becomes the audience and the audience becomes the
performer. The performance experience involves performers and audience reaching out to
each other and reaching into themselves to express and discover their identities. The tools
of this mutual process of relating are environment, sound, body, and language.
Affection
feeling of affection among its participants whether they are performers or audiences. A
teenage woman participant of the theatre workshop and performances in India tell us about
this affection and feeling of care for others evolving from her experience of performance:
From this play, we got many inspirations, which we would try to implement in our
lives, and will keep working for it. We have come together to form a “ youth
fraternity” to diagnose the problems in our society. I am very impressed with this
Correspondence).
The use of the word “youth fraternity” is noteworthy here. It symbolizes the affection that
developed among the young participants in the performance workshop as a result of their
The feeling of affection also comes from the realization of common problems faced
performance in India realized that they are in the same boat and they would have to cling
Performance for Community Friendships 16
on to each other and support each other if they have to develop and grow. Potentially this
feeling of affection can grow and make people work for mutual betterment.
Service
The above three characteristics of community friendship, i.e. equality, mutuality, and
affection give birth to the desire in many members of a community to serve others who are
similar to them. This feeling of bonding is the root of rejuvenation and sustenance of a
community. This desire to serve others in fact makes life worth living. One female
The desire to achieve something, and curiosity to gain special knowledge has also
increased, and I want that this change comes in other girls also. I will continue my
effort to counsel them, because an effort is never wasted. At last one day, the
darkness of this society will end and light will enter (Personal Correspondence) .
This concern for not only one’s self but for others also, is the ethic of care that Friedman
(1993) has discussed. Once this care is established among human beings, community
comes into existence. There can be no community without a desire to serve others, and
there can be no friendship without the existence of a community. And without friends “no
one would choose to live, though he had all other goods” (Aristotle, 1980).
performances can affect real change in society. On the one hand, they can unite community
into action by reinforcing its already held beliefs, and on the other they can be powerful
tools to resist oppression and hegemony, and affect change. As Peter M. Nardi tells us,
“friendship has the potential to develop and maintain unconventional values and styles of
Performance for Community Friendships 17
behavior through shared choice and to transform social and political life” (Nardi, 1999, p.
communities of choice largely through friendship networks. Supported by their friends and
community, they have organized a political presence and transformed social life. Notably,
According to Michael Pakaluk, the community friendships are developed when household
friendships are extended to mediating institutions, such as tribe or fraternal association, and
finally to state (in Nardi, 1999, p. 190). I argue that the performance events in a society can
Friendships formed during Nautanki performances in Bihar India are a good example of
these associations. Performers, particularly young women and men brought together by
these performances, formed a well-knit group of friends. This community of young people
did not stop at being satisfied by forming friendships for personal sake but went on to
affect a positive change in their social and cultural surroundings. For instance, they
challenged their society’s bias towards favoring boys against girls. In rural India, girls do
not have an easy access to education. Most of the time, girls work at home and help in the
house hold chores while their brothers go to school to study. In one of the villages, where
performances were done, the young women and men friends started a school in their
village for underprivileged children, particularly for girls who did not have an access to
education. They provided tuition, books, notebooks and writing material free of cost to
poor kids in their school. Initially they faced difficulties in getting students for their school
but soon the school became very successful drawing more than 50 poor children in a
village with a population of 500 people. In another village, a group of young friends
stopped child marriages and argued with their parents against caste system.
Performance for Community Friendships 18
Conclusion
encourage dialogue. Folk musical theatre, songs, and poetry festivals, among others are
members to identify with each other, and understand and co-create their world through
dialogue. People can also resist oppression by expressing themselves through community
community friendships are different from personal friendships as they are not based on
dyads. Once people start relating and enjoying with many others, they might want to
participation but also gives pleasure and joy to its participants, both performers as well as
audiences.
The potential of performance to create dialogue and friendship is very important for
a society that is based on care, as dialogue is the base on which care for others can be
caring, joyful, and intellectually active society. Equality, mutuality, affection, and service
political as well as social implications, and can be effectively used for a change in
oppressive status quo. Thus community friendships are critical for a society as they extend
the sweet fruits of friendship to a whole community. They take care from the private realm
Performance for Community Friendships 19
of “self” to a public realm of “many others”. Community performances are the critical
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Aristotle (1980). The Nicomachean Ethics. D. Ross (Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University
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Bakhtin, M. M. (1968, 1984). Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
California press.
Dillard, S. (2002). The art of performing poetry: Festivals, slams, and Americans’
favorite poem project events. Text and Performance Quarterly 22 (3), 217-227.
Relationships and Moral Theory. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Hansen, K. (1992). Grounds for Play, The Nautanki Theatre of North India. Berkley; Los
Sharma, D. (2004). Personal interviews with performers and audience at Donkey Open
Surrey : Curzon.