On Theatre Collaboration

A collaboration is the coming together of artists, learners, thinkers, poets, writers, actors in a meaningful communion. The act of collaborating is the need of all their pieces; when many minds, thoughts, ideas, feelings come in a journey of art; creativity springs out, sprouts up. But, what happens to a piece which does not collaborate ? It stays in a well of old thoughts and feelings drawn by experiences of relatives, people, and stale audience. Collaboration can also happen with a space, a venue, the touch, the feel, the wind, the smell at a venue. A discerning eye can build such collaborations. But sadly, little collaborations happen in Pune. What little happen is still broken into individual artist performance. Even watching the performance of a fellow theatre group is an experiential-collaboration. It is one of the deepest communion you can have of a piece. After you start collaborating with artists, you can collaborate with forms and categories. A business collaboration, a promotional collaboration, a venue collaboration,to collaborate is to build sublimity and sophistication.In a theatre piece, a director seeks to just create an environment, sustainable for collaboration. And the collaboration and the art take over. Let us says, a theatre group has been doing one story for six months with same actors. What I am telling the group, can you pick actors, from another group who can take your piece forward ? Can you smell such artists ? Or can you at least attract such artists ? Swatantra Theatre carries out a collaboration with Aakansha Rangbhoomi last year, and there was a palpable sharing of body language and theatrical-thinking. An actor conceives an idea, it's construct and presentation in improvisation time-moment, differently in different groups. On the floor you can understand , how soon to present a situation to an audience from a given idea. The quickness of thought, story-construct can only come in a collaboration. You also know your society well, when you a re collaborating, or otherwise you are in your own solipsistic world. Go collaborate "The whole world is like your family."