The Garbage Project — A performance piece in the public space
Discarded electronic goods, empty bottles, thermocol, plastic bags and broken bathroom fittings were scattered all over as I entered the campus of the National School of Drama during its 13th Bharat Rang Mahotsav last week. My first thought was that the school was under renovation. I then saw four beautiful women wrapped in newspapers, empty water bottles dangling from their waist and their faces painted in bright “plastic” make-up. I asked one of them, “May I talk to you for a minute?” She nodded. I didn’t know what that meant until a man told me, “She’s performing. Do not disturb!”
As I walked around, I came upon a dining table set with delicious delicacies and expensive wines. A gray-haired French man was sitting at the table all by himself, and very gracefully he was eating and littering. I again tried talking. And again the same response: “He’s performing. Do not disturb!” The Garbage Project, by sculptor Manish Kansara and theatre artiste Harish Khanna, was a startling four-day journey aimed at self-realisation.
The first part of the play highlighted people’s attitude towards garbage collectors. A set was created at the drama school’s food hub which was basically three huge “use me” white bins placed on an elevated platform. The lids were closed. And inside, garbage segregators, from the Ghazipur landfill site, were going about their job. The shock on faces as intrigued visitors peered in was what Kansara and Khanna had aimed at. Shock and shame.
In part two, 10,000 plastic water bottles were used to create a huge waterfall and then the Yamuna, or, as Khanna said, “The Black River”. Filled with fresh water, bottles were rolled, forming a wet, glistening carpet. Actors dressed and groomed as Delhi’s elites, walked on these bottles. The walk was symbolic of the mess the rich have made of our world with the mindless use of plastic.
The final act had civic agency workers collecting waste.
Garbage is waste, an unwanted or undesired substance. That’s the definition of garbage, not garbage collectors. And this was the message that K&K were aiming at — The message to stop and think. Before we consume. before we litter. before we deface., before we destroy.
Once we consume and throw, it becomes invisible for us. The four-day journey marked the beginning but the journey never ends.