Hello, I return with a story about useless things. This weekend, I attended a workshop titled Secrets of Useless Things at Mumbai’s Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan. Admittedly, it was also a three-day window to catch up with South Mumbai – an opportunity to visit the Jehangir Art gallery where Subhash Awachat’s Sacred Garden is on. The Terrace Gallery also had a wonderful photo exhibition of Jagdish Agarwal called Zen Moments. The fountain pen exhibition at neighboring Coomarswamy Hall was another immersive world in itself.

But the workshop by Chinese Documentary theatre artist Zhao Chuan conquered my weekend. Chuan had flown in from Shanghai. He was brought by two other theatre practitioners who designed-curated the three-day experience – Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tucchman.

The workshop was part of their efforts to build audiences, pedagogy and new practitioners for documentary theatre in India. They are working towards Asia’s first festival of documentary theatre in December 2020 – trying to see how documentary theatre (an unconventional practice that is premised on use of real life situations as source material) can find new dimensions in India. They are trying to see if real life players (though untrained) can be woven into the practice as `experts’ to recount contemporary realities, and also if trained actors can be made part of the process — a composite learning evolving journey.

Coming to Zhao Chuan’s classroom at Mumbai’s Max Mueller Bhavan, one was intrigued by the rather metaphysical question that was central to the workshop.  Chuan, a believer in socially-engaged theatre, has been the founding member of Shanghai based theatre collective Grass Stage since 2005.  He has presented his idea of theatre in international art residencies and collaborations.  As part of the initial instruction, he asked the 25-odd participants to bring one or two ‘useless’ things along with themselves.  The brief excited me.  What is useless in my life? I started thinking. In fact, that was the aim of the workshop.  In an increasingly acquisitive world, what are our possessions? How much do we invest in these objects? Do we really buy these items because of a need? Or are these items acquired out of an inner urge to own a volume? How do we cut down this urge?  And can all this add a dimension to the theatre we perform?  Can these objects be source material? These questions were the focal points of the workshop.

To give you a sampling of what I carried  on three days of the workshop – an old mauve Lakme lipstick, a used face cream tube, a copper bracelet and a broken hair clip.  These were some of my favorite things, at one point. Gradually, they lost their significance; some of the objects were at the fag end of their shelf life; and one of them changed color due to air pollution.  Also the items were replaceable and not even meant for life-long company.  Or is it that they became  throwaway material for no reason?  Obviously, how could a kada, which was bought after a friend recommended use of copper on the body, lose its value? Why was no effort made to get it repolished? These and several other similar questions were posed by the workshop to each participant.  Pencils, pens, Christmas decorations, water bottles, erasers, crushed sugarcane, adapters, wires, tapes, a torn note, hair bands, invite cards, pigeon feathers, batteries, you name it … and the workshop had those many ‘useless’ objects.

 Zhao Chuan asked for each participant’s introduction through the prism of the referenced object – the back story associated with the object, the gradual loss of value and the subsequent decision to discard the object. Later, we were asked to pick up objects (from the pool) that aroused our curiosity.  What would happen if someone else chose our discarded object?  Will that rekindle our interest in the object? 

For three days, we continued deliberations around useless objects, keeping them at the (literally placed centrally too ) center of the discussion. We had to finally present the back stories in short two-minute skits.  Some skits turned out better and served as cathartic moments; whereas some seemed underdeveloped.  But the purpose was served: How much do we acquire in terms of objects and does that speak about ourselves?  How do we perceive the objects we own? Do they shape our lives and our mindsets? Much like how our human company defines us, do these objects also define us? Do our discarded objects have an afterlife? Have we re-purposed them, so as to test the possibilities? It was a reflective moment to assess the `dramatic’ afterlife of some objects definitely – my mauve lipstick was one of them!