Kathmandu He was in the Capital to conduct a three-day workshop for theatre artistes of Sarwanam group, and India’s renowned theatre personality Subodh Patnaik says, “I share how to cook, but there is no guarantee that at the end of the day your food will sell. I want to get satisfaction from the trainees, who are participating in this workshop, that they would at least be good cooks.” Patnaik joined theatre because he wanted to become a hero. In his search, he met the influential and pioneer street theatre director and writer Badal Sircar. This meeting changed his life as it gave his purpose direction. With 25 long plays as well as 45 short plays, all of which he has directed to his name, Patnaik also came up with two models of theatre — cyco theatre and intimate theatre, also known as rural theatre and urban theatre. Born in 1964 to veterinary Dr Pramod Chandra Patnaik and Dr Sashi Prava Patnaik in Puri, Orissa, India, he says his parents motivated him to think about society first. When this engineering student wanted to join theatre, his family was against it because of the insecure future in theatre. But he graduated from the Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya. Before meeting Sircar, Subodh had gone to Delhi where he heard about street theatre, which drew people because of the subjects tackled. Everyone talked about Safdar Hashmi. Subodh went to the Communist Party to meet him. “Can you train us in street theatre?” Subodh asked, to which Hashmi counter-asked, “Are you a Communist?” Subodh replied no. “If you are not a Communist party member or Communist, I will not train you.” “Why? I just want to do theatre. I don’t want to do politics.” Hashmi asked, “Do you think doing theatre is not politics?” Subodh answered, “No. Theatre is art. I want to do art to draw attention to subject.” Hashmi died in 1989 and it was then that Subodh realised, “Yes, doing theatre is politics. But my answer should have been, ‘Yes, I want to do politics but not party politics.’ That should have been my answer to him. It took me five years to get to this answer.” In his search for a form of theatre that would attract the audience to the subject matter, not just innovation, Subodh met his “Sircar Guru”. As he wanted to do subject-oriented theatre, this led Subodh to learn about society and its problems. “I found that there are more victims of some problems. So, I thought I will pick such problems where victims are more in number.” Patnaik’s plays are about the so-called middle and lower class people’s problems. As a student of theatre, this research challenge led him to form Natya Chetana. “I wanted to connect to these two things, so Natya Chetana was born on November 10, 1986.” Today Natya Chetana performs in front of both urban and rural audience. Subodh also developed the idea of Cyco theatre for rural people who do not have access to theatre. A group of artists cycle to villages and tell their story through a play. Using natural symbols, he believes theatre is real means to communicate with all types of class. His intimate theatre is for his urban audience to stage the problems of lower class to the middle class and provoke thought. His subject matters mostly deal with poverty, struggle and pain of life. Looking at the pan South Asian theatre Subodh found some common features — governments give lesser budget to theatre, theatre is treated as a step to enter movies. He feels that the real spirit of theatre has been compromised. “In my time there were those who had come to study theatre or do theatre with a mission, but it is not so any more.” He also found that “duplicating” is a major problem today regarding creativity. “People want to duplicate. It is not that they lack creativity, the problem is that they just follow a trend that is set by a few so-called people in power. My workshop is to help artistes realise that they can be creative.” He believes that theatre cannot survive without struggles, but it is a struggle that matters to those it should matter to. “All struggles get returns. I live, eat and sleep at theatre. I don’t have any (other) source of earning. Sometimes I get scholarship or help from donors. For the last five years, my wife (Dr Mamata Pradhan) has been supporting me.”