Founder and director of Teamwork Arts Sanjoy K Roy tells Saimi Sattar that in times of social distancing, it is imperative that entertainment and cultural events shift to the online space
If you ask even a non-reader to guess the name of a literary festival which takes place every year at the Diggi Palace at Jaipur, the prompt answer would be Jaipur Literary Festival. That is the kind of traction the JLF, with its celebrity writers, impressive background, cultural spread and large crowds invites. But then the last is certainly an anathema in current times of social distancing. So then Teamwork Arts, the group behind JLF, which is known to keep abreast with changing times, has decided to evolves and announced a digital literature series. Called the Brave New World, it is perhaps the answer to testing times. But then literature also has the power to instill hope when the bleak world doesn’t seem to hold out any.
The aim of the virtual initiative is to celebrate the power and positivity of books and rather than the backdrop of the Diggi Palace, it is powered by the borderless Internet. Scheduled to kick off from April 4 which will see eminent author and advocate Abhinav Chandrachud and journalist Pragya Tiwari, in conversation on the devastating Bombay bubonic plague epidemic of 1896 and its repercussions today.
However, it is not just this particular session but the others as well that are relevant to current times. When we are constantly hooked on to our phones all the time, another conversation is relevant where writer and broadcaster Bee Rowlatt will explore the need to protect the “forum internum” — our private mental space — from the incursions of digital technology — at a session titled Freedom of Thought with Baroness Helena Kennedy.
Similarly, there are writer, politician and public intellectual Shashi Tharoor and President of Observer Research Foundation Samir Saran, co-authors of the recent The New World Disorder and the India Imperative, in conversation and will share their views on the current crisis the world is going through.
JLF is known to be a forum open to discussion, debate and dissent. Walls and Bridges will be a session on dystopian fiction and its increasingly real and uncanny presence in our lives in which Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila (which was adapted into a Netflix series), and Amrita Tripathi, author of The Sibius Knot will share their views.
One wonders if it was easy getting the authors on board for such an exercise where they conduct the session online. “The lucky thing is that nothing is happening these days as everything has been cancelled worldwide. JLF is not a new kid on the block and people know what we do. We have a fairly robust advantage to be able to reach out to a fairly large audience quickly and make these interactions fun, interactive and allow the authors to get out there,” says founder and director of Teamwork Arts Sanjoy K Roy.
When we connect over a phone call to understand more of the move, he is his erudite self. He enquires how newspapers continue to publish in current times and goes on to quote examples from the world to elaborate upon his understanding of the situation. “A report that I read said that the financial losses of this on sports, arts and more has been gauged at one trillion. And you are looking at events like Dubai Expo, Olympics and more. By the way, this calculation is just for May-June! So there is no way we would be able to compensate this through online business. But every crisis ensures that Man tries to paddle furiously to stay alive and afloat like newspapers are doing by going online and what we are also doing,” he says.
The change naturally would bring about drastic transformation in the world the way we know it. “The consequences would be two or three-fold in the Indian scenario where social distancing norms will be in place till October,” says Roy who is at pains to point out that, “We fail to see the pandemic outbreak as primarily a health crisis and focus on the economic aspect. So you need to address the former, first. We need isolation, aggressive testing like Japan and South Korea and try to control the spread by focussing on science and technology to find a vaccine or a medicine to control this. The virus or flu won’t disappear on April 14 when the lockdown ends.”
Coming to the economy, Roy says that in order to ensure a resurgence the need of the hour is ensuring safe places. “There has been a flight of labour which is not coming back in a hurry so supply and production chains will be disrupted. Kickstarting the economy will take another three to six months after the situation has become normal. But by that time everyone would be so used to eating and buying local that any demand would be kicked out of the window. These things certainly do not bode well for the recessionary economic situation that we were coming out of. This has further increased gloom and doom.”
However, Roy besides being pragmatic and well-read also has a tendency to find a silver lining in the situation. He points out that, “The only good thing mentioned in the Boston Consultancy Report is that entertainment will be consumed at a greater level and will go online. And so will the media. In the recovery, entertainment would recover faster but media won’t as it is dependent on advertising , which is disappearing.” However, with social distancing and the fear of infection having been inbuilt into the sub conscience, entertainment will naturally not be on the lines of huge jamborees where success is measured in terms of the number of footfalls. “We are looking more at online products and those that are for online. It is certainly not a rehashing of what we had earlier. But really new stuff which is tailor made for this platform,” he says.
Naturally there arises the question of financial viability. “Subscription, online payment and all that will have to be put into place. We cannot do the same old as it will not work,” says Roy and adds, “So much has gone online so quickly as there are a plethora of options including music, programme, talkshow and more. These have to be looked at differently and given a more of 360 degree look and feel.”
He says that this has become essential since entertainment, as we know it, has changed for a long time to come. “An American survey of about a thousand people had 49 per cent of the respondents saying that they would not go back to a film theatre again. We know that they are more careful but the reality is that we aren’t getting a situation anytime soon when people are rushing off to the Kumbh Melas of the world,” he says.
Incidentally, Teamwork Arts has several other successful cultural festival including Ishaara Puppet Theatre, Mahindra Kabira Festival, The Sacred Pushkar and many other national and international ones under its ever-expanding belt.
Not just entertainment, but even travel for business, entertainment and destination weddings will change. He says, “The information coming out of aviation ministry is that we would consider case by case basis where we can fly. We would not have into place a system that would allow business as usual even after the lockdown, or the peak of infection disappears.”
However, since human beings are essentially social animals, the need to be in touch and connected with others remains. “Every evening there is either a Zoom party or Houseparty that I am attending. These video chats would be the need of the hour. Offline, people would come together but in much smaller numbers. When the virus began to spread two Teamwork colleagues were getting married and there was a grand celebration across cities but then they had a quick court wedding with a lunch where there were just the immediate family members,” says he.
Yes, entertainment will remain but the platform are all set to change in this new world.