Jab They Met, the title inspired by the blockbuster film Jab We Met, is titillating enough to draw an audience which it did at the India Habitat Centre recently. Presented by The Living Room Theatre, the play is an ongoing process in raising “awareness on the social issues of the day” by writer- director-singer and founder of the group, Sarita Vohra, who has written the amazing number of 45 plays for children and adults. Quite an achievement! But is what she writes drama?
Drama is the rendering of human action by human beings. It is, thus, an exploration of the potentialities of human action and an exploration of the human character. Other literary forms also deal with a consideration of the relationship between human action and the human character, but in theatre the characters stand alone, so to speak, with no interference from the writer, no comments or analysis. Drama is an art purely of the character in action.
Even when writers like Brecht or, closer home, Sarweshwar Dayal Saxena’s play Bakri or any of Habib Tanvir’s plays propagate an ideology or a social problem, it is done keeping in mind the basic requirement of theatre; human conflict and an exploration of the human character in reference to it. The message comes through this action on stage and does not have to be spelt out in any form.
One knows the play Jab They Met is about cancer the moment one reaches the foyer. There are huge placards on the International Oncology Centre and with the brochure we receive some literature about the centre. Before the play begins, we are subjected to a lecture on care that this institution is takng to make cancer patients comfortable, how they have the latest machines for the detection and treatment of cancer in a hospital in Gurgaon.
The play opens with a group of school children on the last day in school. Celebrations include an original song which turns out to be a lift from Sound of Music. In fact, with Que Sera Sera all the songs were lifted from films of that period along with lyrics. The first act ends with the children speaking of the coming of the Internet and the mobilephone. Thirty years later, it is the mobilephone that is instrumental in bringing the group together.
The get-together is as banal as the first act. Standing in a straight line on stage is a no-no in theatre. The cast also sits in a line. Dipsy, the person who is the trigger of the meeting, is congratulated and then forgotten about until the end when she comes in to declare melodramatically that she is a cancer survivor. So everyone is aghast that such a lively girl (she does a mujra before this announcement) has had cancer. Most of the cast is in the play for the exposure it offers, when one can turn around and say, “I do theatre you know”.
There is no conflict of any kind, the characters are flat and have no development. In fact, they are picked out for what they were. For instance, a girl called Queen Victoria, when in school, is made to behave the same way with tragically odd imagery. The language, as written and as spoken, is intoned in a peculiar singsong style. There are no performances to speak of. In fact, the play is non-theatre and to pass it off as a drama is not fair to the ticket buying audiences. Methinks that Ms Vohra should go back to where she began in 1988, her living room.