To me, sociology is theatre, and theatre is sociology, and both of them form the basic constituent material of my life. I have been associated with the theatre, as an awestruck observer and accidental insider for as long as I have been alive. From a very young age, I knew that that was the work I wanted to do. For years before I could articulate it, I knew intuitively that the theatre was my home, and that there was something untranslatable in the magic of it that was also at the centre of my being.

Before becoming a full-time theatre worker though, I decided to do a three-year undergraduate course in Sociology, which changed, on a very fundamental level, my conception of the world and my art. There are many ways, big and small, in which sociology continues to impact my day-to-day life, but I am only attempting to outline my observations on the intersections between sociology and theatre, and how they interact in my life. This is not an easy task to attempt, and I risk both generalisation and romanticisation, but I have done my best to elucidate my lived reality.

Firstly, at the heart of both theatrical and sociological enquiry lies the tension between the personal and the political. The sociological imagination, that basic ability to connect the historical and the biographical, has also always been the responsibility and the work of an artist. Perhaps no art form is as historically entrenched in this inherent tension as the theatre, which lies at the confluence of activism and literature. A common adage in the theatre world goes “Don’t make a play unless you have something to say”. This does not mean that every good play must be overtly or explicitly ‘political’, nor does it mean it must have a moralising or revolutionary core. It simply means that it must contain within it the maker’s relationship, in some form, to the world, and by extension to themselves. The very act of putting up a play, of taking up space and time, to use body and voice and mind to tell a story live to a group of people, is inherently political, and a deeply personal one.

My stint as a sociologist-in-training also transformed my relationship with the ‘field’. While researching for and making a play, I find myself unconsciously replicating the methods of participant observation. At all times to be participating, but to have some kind of internal distance that allows for the translation and transmutation of ‘data’ into a cohesive and deliberate piece of work. It allows me to engage with people and communities- those that I go into and those that I create, as social actuality with internal structures and symbols and roles that can be understood and tapped into.

It was perhaps this affinity to the community that drew me first to the theatre and then to sociology. Theatre is absolutely about community. It is created by a community, for a community. Making theatre, watching theatre, involves before all else a meaningful coming together of people. Sociology allowed me, for the first time, to be able to see this community as something that could be studied. That the ‘meaningful coming together of people’ is in itself perhaps the main act and not the byproduct, and that it forms in itself a rich enough subject to spend lifetimes observing and understanding. Sociology also, ironically enough, introduced me to an entirely new community- one that spends its time studying itself. To carry any kinship with this group is to be possessed of an endlessly fascinating vantage point to view the world and yourself. It is indispensable to any work I create as an artist.

The final point I wish to illustrate leaves me in danger of being accused of oversimplification. It is, however, perhaps the most profound and personal way in which my worldview has been shaped by sociology. Allan G Johnson put it best in his outstanding book The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice and Promise-

“Neither people nor systems exist without the other, and yet neither can be reduced to the other. The complexity of my life isn’t some predictable product of the systems I participate in, nor is a social system an accumulation of my own and other people’s lives” (Johnson, 1997).

This refusal to reduce people to systems and systems to people is the central tenet of any meaningful practice of sociology or theatre. As two completely different systems of knowledge, they nevertheless share this fundamental defiance, which to me, personally, is an axiom against despair. From this refusal stems curiosity, resistance, and perhaps most importantly, empathy. It acts as a guard against the easy trap of cynicism and forces me to engage with people as socially situated unique individuals. This means that every situation has particularity and nuance and every human being is in process. This irreducible duality leaves no space for essentialism or convenient platitudes. It insists on constant investigation, it disallows foregone conclusions.

What could be more exciting for an artist?

References:

Johnson, A. G. (2014). The forest and the trees: Sociology as life, practice, and promise (3rd ed.). Temple University Press.

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Vanya Singh is a 21 year old writer, actor and theatre maker based in Mumbai, India. Her first play, Birdflight, premiered at Thespo 25 and has since been performed 13 times across four cities. It is produced by D for Drama and written, directed and performed by her. She has recently been associate director on two productions by Aryana theatre- Tumhaare Baare Mein and Pyaar Aadmi Ko Kabootar Bana Deta Hai – both written and directed by Manav Kaul. She is currently working on a new original script. Vanya has also done a BA in Sociology from Indraprastha College for Women (IPCW), University of Delhi.