D Anuradha Kapur on theatre but without the presence of the performer, or the risk of the performance, as Anuradha puts it. GK: The discourse of theatre should have its autonomy, it should not be answerable to the possibility of distortions embedded in another art form... KSh: Yes I agree, but the problem is that unless we look at this absence of theatrical 19 activity, squarely, and try and preserve its growth, we are going to have a complete suicide as far as all the arts are concerned — because this displaced theatricality becomes the norm by which you judge all art and make all art. This is a real problem. AK: The way Ashish posed the problem, that the filmmaker does not bother as to what the audience receives, is one I cannot take on board. In the theatre the actor and the spectator do bother; they must, as the risk of the theatre is in its terrifying immediacy. Somebody here and somebody there ventures to communicate, and there is no way of knowing whether it will be possible to do so except at the very moment of its happening. The risk in proposing this is the risk of accepting the possibilities of dialogue. This brings me back to what Geeta was asking about the tragic form. I should say that theatre metaphorizes this risk of opening up dialogic possibilities; and this is an existential proposition as much as it is anything else. Greek tragedy speaks of the failures of thought, the dangers of action, and the mismatch between knowledge and understanding. Of all forms, I believe that Greek tragedy illustrates this proposition best of all. Further, as it also speaks of a flawed community, it compels us to interrogate ours. It seeks to set up an active, interrogative community that questions what it is told about thought and action, desire and power, speech and self. AKh: Total theatrical performance— I mean more than the written text — is dependent on the audience in the way the works of art capable of mechanical reproduction are not. The very rhythm changes. So when one talks of communication you have to understand it differently. AR: Definitely. Today, politically, all of us — regardless of the forms we practise in — are facing certain problems, certain threats. Economists and political scientists and art historians and practitioners of the arts. Now there are certain kinds of problems that are the most acutely articulate in the theatre, and to resolve them in the theatre is to make it possible for a lot of things to happen in other art forms. The point I'm trying to make is that the possibility of communication per se is being riddled by crises, and since theatre is facing these problems in a certain way as to privilege these particular problems, the way you ask this question of yourself is crucial to us all. Numbers 20-21