Photo Credits: tiatr story
Tiatr is a form of entertainment that existed way before even the Indian government existed. Starting in 1892 in Bombay, the art nonetheless was promoted by Goans in such a way that it benefitted society, not to mention our mother tongue, Konkani. And who were the judges of this – the audience. If anything was liked by the masses, claps would mark these sentiments while an encore would happen with whistles.
While masses in a city hall today would mean about 1000 people given the capacity of the halls, in earlier times crowds of about 2000 people on an average filling up an open space or field in a village. “Many times, I have witnessed how the old and young children brought their own chairs to sit on, since shows started late and then lasted 3 to 4 hours and one was not guaranteed a seat if there was more crowd,” mentions veteran woman comedian, Patilda Dias. Apart from the fact that this was about entertainment and not the money really, it did however have the element of providing the crowds with good morals and messages through the stories depicted in tiatrs.
“Extended whistles meant the crowd like the cantar, and if the whistles continued, it only meant that they wanted more,” mentions Fatima D’Souza, veteran actress and wife of late Anil Kumar. For expressing displeasure the weapon, considered most shamefull, was the concept of ‘ush’. “If even one person sometimes did not like a song or anything on stage, an ‘ush’ would be shouted, and often many others would join in,” says Roseferns. “Sometimes though, this was also due to personal enemity.” However, far from ruffling feathers of politicians, creating controversies or ever being arrested, this was considered much worse.
“The earlier audience demanded quality or they had a weapon to scare the tiatrist with – ushh. Boyer got boo-ed for coming late, while others for singing the same song again. People would also go ush when any expletive was used on stage. It was a strict no-no. Now-a-days, words like bastard and other expletives have entered dialogues, albeit with some good reason in the plot,” explains Silva clearing the air about his late best friend M Boyer. “Maybe the excitement was much more – for a tiatr then, than now,” analyse few tiatr critics and believe you me, there are many.
“But during those days, crowds were from remote villages and they even lacked education. That’s why the brash ways came out without finesse probably,” says tiatrist Menino de Bandar. What one must note here is that in the tiatr world, the concept of ush was taken very seriously given that it was ultimately a people’s verdict.
“There are tiatrists who gave up tiatristponn totally due to being boo-ed by the ‘ush’ concept that somehow also maintained quality in a tiatr. This very ‘ush’, no matter how derogatory it was, would set the standard. Gradually around the nineties, this concept of ush, became softer in volume,” inputs Wilmix Wilson Mazarello, a tiatr historian; courtesy his first ever book on tiatr titled, ‘100 Years of the Konkani Tiatr.’ For most Goans, tiatr is not only a display of their culture and language, but also a celebration or sorts, and thus one mostly sees children coming to watch tiatrs by the hoardes. From earlier, to a point today in time, given the recent spate of events, wonder if the approach adopted to express disagreement or displeasure in tiatrs has gone a few steps behind while trying to get ahead.
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Late Jacinto Vaz, called the Charlie Chaplin of the Konkani stage has written a song on this concept of ush. As informed by Roseferns this very song is scheduled to be re-released soon by the late comedians son, Peter. It apparently explains that us Goans always reared pigs in our houses and thus we had the sound ush ush right on the tips of all our tongues in our attempt to direct or call pigs for meals.
