Day 9

24th May 2019

Activities:

1. We began the day with a presentation on oral histories. Chanakya spoke to us about different playwrights, writers, and academics that employed oral histories in their work. We watched part of an interview with Urvashi Butalia, a writer who collected oral histories about the partition, where she discussed her motivations and why she thought oral histories are important historical artefacts. We also watched part of a lecture with Meena R. Menon, a senior trade unionist, about Mumbai’s mill workers and their struggles, and tied that in with the use of oral histories in Sunil Shanbag’s play “Cotton 56, Polyester 84.” We noted that oral histories are an important tool in documenting and representing ordinary people’s stories.
2. Additionally, an oral history is an interpretive event; an interviewee has to compress their life into a matter of hours, and their decision, conscious or subconscious, to include some events and omit others is worthy of exploration. Finally, we also observed that oral histories, which are essentially memories, are shaped as much by the moment of their telling as by the history that is being told.
3. Then, we were given a transcribed conversation and asked to interpret it in groups. The transcription was about a woman who, after decades of service, was laid off, and how she struggled to come to terms with this sudden change in her life. We tried to piece together an understanding of what the speaker was like, and what her life had been like; and then discussed our findings together. This is the transcript we used.
4. Then, we were asked to pick a video on YouTube and transcribe a portion of it. We were told to keep our eyes open for interesting details that we might have missed when just listening to the clip. We shared our transcripts and our findings with one another.
5. After that, we took time to think about whether each of our projects would benefit from collecting interviews; and if yes, then with whom? We also thought about the following questions: where would find our desired subjects? What questions would we ask them?

Questions considered:

1. In reviewing oral histories, we must ask: who is saying what? To whom? For what purpose and under what circumstances?
2. What moves people to conduct interviews as a way of documenting history? What is it that oral histories offer that existing academic work does not?
3. How can you maintain objectivity, as far as possible, in conducting interviews? What role can oral histories and interviews play in creating theatre? How can you use primary research to produce complex, realistic characters and worlds?