ABSTRACT
Robyn: Many of Jana Sanskriti’s (JS) plays depict women’s struggle in society. How did you create those plays as a company? What was the process that led up to the end product?
Sanjoy: In all the plays, we follow the method that we call ‘scripting the play’. When I first decided to be a theatre person I formed a theatre group in a village with the local youth, and it was all men because women were not allowed to perform, whereas now more than 50 percent of the actors in JS are women, even amongst the jokers. When I was working with the group in the beginning of JS I noticed that if they were asked to play a script it was too taxing for them because they cannot read, they are hearing and trying to memorise. In folk theatre, actually they don’t often ‘play the script’ they ‘script the play’. I noticed this, so therefore I decided to approach from a different angle and let them script the play, because if they script the play themselves they will be able to remember. So that is how JS playmaking started.
