You may question why there is so much of aesthetic brilliance in the domain of art but mediocrity in politically inclined cultural practices. If Nepali art raises itself to the level of exceptional maturity, the world outside the stages and studios are pitiable in form and content. The only answer that comes to my mind regarding such contradictions is that art flourishes and survives more in times of difficulties. There are writers, actors, painters and musicians who have been tirelessly representing Nepali imagination in aesthetic domains.
You may judge Nepali politics by laughing and ridiculing it, but you need a different set of mood to enter into the spaces of art. A bit of apprehension, some sense of sublime, some critical approaches, some serenity of mind are imperative to see and witness the brilliant representation of culture on stages and studios.
On Friday, May 22, Gurukul staged British playwright Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. In Europe, its performances have first been deplored as the depiction of grotesque aspects of life. Since the script is considered to be a suicide note by the dramatist, the deranged mind of the playwright has disorganized script unfit to be staged, many critics claimed. Even Michael Billington, a renowned theatre critic from Britain, could not recognize the relationship between aesthetics and the suicide note.
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But Nisha Sharma, the most powerful artist on present Nepali stage created a masterpiece of acting. Her intensity was exceptional in relation to how one brings life in acting. The performance transformed the moments of madness into the moments of spectacle of emotions and feelings, skills and lifelikeness. The play may be considered to be a dark drama of life, mind’s violent fits, ugly languages of depressed moods, but out of all such failures of a person’s life, Nisha evoked the art of acting to its near perfection. It was a brilliant performance on madness. “How do you bring tears and mental derangement on stage?” I asked her after the play. “There is a bit of everything in the life around us and an actor has to bring whatever is required on stage from the bits,” she laughed. She brought madness on stage and that makes the play a wonderful piece of art. I hope Gurukul performs the play again and we will be able see how different the art is amidst mediocrity and meanness in external cultural practices.
On a similar evening, May 8, at Alliance Francaise, Salil Subedi Kanika had merged the dying rhino with his artistic self. It was both the animal and man in Salil who performed death on stage. The painful incident of dying rhino whose horn was severed from its head stunned the audience into pain. Performing Salil had lost himself into the eternal pain of the dying animal.
The strange thing for me was that Nisha’s madness and Salil death on May stages happened amidst the most bizarre political farce of our times whose acts and scenes do not seem to end. Nepali social scientist Pratyoush Onta always asks about the political role of Nepali art. His concern is honest. I think art at times speaks through its aesthetic distance from the real. At times its messages are coded with metaphors of how elevated and different Nepali art is from the Nepali political real and many other cultural reals. Arts always have to be message oriented in didactic terms. I notice the difference of art and politics, for instance, and come to define what art is performing and what politics is not.
I see and observe the aesthetic heights Nepali arts have accomplished in the recent times. Why does a painter or an actor excel in his or her profession while many others are dishonest to their occupations? The difference of aesthetic perfection and professionalism in comparison to the general political practices speaks about the role of art in terms with what politics does not do for itself and what art does.
Nepali art in general is not dishonest: it works around the profession of artistic faith, it goes through rigorous trainings, it learns and understands life, and it invites the audience to witness what it has learnt. Political practices, on the other hand, are devoid of all those sincerity art possesses. It does not perform what it is supposed to do.
Thus, the political role of art can be understood by observing how art is continuously trying to speak to the audience who come to studious and stages in the evenings. Art attracts the crowd away from life to see life on stage. The solace, solution and satisfaction the crowd experiences in artistic spaces reveal the underlying political role of art. Nisha and Salil are just two examples, and such individuals travel a lot in Nepal and whenever they go they make the evenings meaningful to the crowd and to themselves.
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