Right from its inception the tiatr has a particular format and hence it was/is different from other forms of drama. It has prose as well as music but it is neither a musical nor a prose drama. The main characteristics of this unique format can be briefly described as under:
The story is divided into 6 or 7 parts. Each partcan be called one act but in the tiatr language it is called a ‘podd’ddo’.Hence a tiatr can have six to seven ‘podd’dde’. The story begins in 1st‘podd’ddo’, runs without any disconnection through all ‘podd’dde’.
The history of the tiatr is a witness to the factthat no tiatr has become successful without comedy sequences in it. Hence,tiatr since its inception has had comedy sequences that are an integral part ofthe theme of the play.
‘Canto’ is a small song mostly one verse and onechorus or two verses and one chorus. ‘Canto’ is the result of emotions of thehappenings in the story expressed through singing. In the past there usedto be practically one ‘canto’ in every ‘podd’ddo’ in the tiatr.
Kantaram were also called a ‘side show’ of the tiatr in the past. Thethemes of these kantaram had no relevance to the theme of the story of thetiatr. In fact one, two or three kantaram were presented in between every two‘podd’dde’ in front of the curtain of the road scene so that enough time isprovided to have new stage setting done behind the curtain.
Some people feel that maintaining the use of curtains fordepicting numerous scenes on the stage is the uniqueness of tiatr. This istotally incorrect. The use of different curtains to present different scenescame subsequently because it could be done easily without putting more effortto create different stage sets for different scenes. That reflects adversely onthe standard of tiatr. If we can use different stage sets instead of curtainssuch efforts will take tiatr to greater heights.
In the past all tiatr directors used to make use of the whistle togive signal for the musicians to start playing the music and to the back stageartistes to drop or raise the curtains. We found that it was a sort ofdisturbance in the smooth flow of the performance of the tiatr and hence wasdiscarded. Today no tiatr director, commercial as well as non-commercial, make useof the whistle. Indeed a step further in the development of tiatr!
My personal experience is that the uniqueness of tiatr in presenttimes is being destroyed due to the fact that very few tiatr writers have triedto link the comedy to the main plot. Another factor that adversely affects theuniqueness of tiatr is when the package of kantaram does not include allvarieties of songs such as duets, duos, trios, quartets and choral songs. It ishigh time that we, the producers, directors, writers and reviewers of tiatrsunderstand the true interpretation of uniqueness of Goan tiatr.
Tomazinho Cardozo isthe former president of the Tiatr Academy of Goa
