It has to be conceded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a sense of the theatre, of spectacle and visualization. He memorises key lines. He is a talented performer. This was clear from his speech and choreographed scenes during the show he and the authorities mounted in Varanasi on December 13. It was a piece of theatre. But real theatre is much more than grandstanding. Real theatre reveals the truth, it does not manipulate truth. Bertolt Brecht, perhaps the most influential theatre personality of the 20th century, created a theory of epic theatre now widely appreciated all over the world. He wanted to make his audience think and famously said that theatre audiences “hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom”. He wanted his audiences to remain objective and distant from emotional involvement so that they could make rational judgments about any social comment or issues in theatre. But even before Brecht, Shakespeare used the device of ‘play within a play’ in Hamlet to seek and reveal the truth. So, he investigates the murder of his father the king. Hamlet stages the play ‘Murder of Gonzago’ before his mother and the usurper, king Claudius, his uncle. When the poison is put into the ears of the king in the play within the play, directed by Hamlet, Claudius asks it to be stopped and shouts, “Give me some light”. So, in a sense the murderer is exposed. Among the finest things about the play Hamlet is its understanding of the process of acting and theatre. Hamlet, the prince, gives detailed guidelines about the technique of acting, among other things, which are cited for actors even today.The ancient Greek theatre used the device of the chorus to offer interpretation of the story that followed. In the acclaimed 16th century play Doctor Faustus, Marlowe retells the story of Faust, the doctor-turned-necromancer, who makes a pact with the devil in order to obtain knowledge and power. Both Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles, who is the devil’s intermediary in the play, are subtly and powerfully portrayed. Marlowe examines Faustus’s grandiose intellectual ambitions, revealing them as futile, self-destructive, and absurd, as analysts have pointed out. The comments of the chorus substantiate these points.
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