Decoding the Dramaturgy of Doubt

When I think of doubt, I think that it is personal, emotional, bad, a hindrance, a nuisance. It is a feeling I hate having in my body. It makes me anxious, as if I’m at a vital crux, and if I choose wrong, I will die. The stakes are extreme even when they’re not.

So often doubt — or maybe let’s call it self doubt — has crippled me. Before I taught for the first time, I was doubtful of my ability to keep students engaged. When I was in drama school, I was doubtful of my skills as compared to my peers. Even after receiving positive responses to my work, I was doubtful as to whether people were telling me the truth. This morning, as I looked at my full calendar, I was doubtful whether I’d make it through without a nap. But as I sat and thought about what the ‘dramaturgy of doubt’ is, I realized that perhaps this confluence of doubt and self-doubt is the most interesting place for me to begin.

Sometimes it feels like there is no space for doubt. It has always seemed a negative thing. It seemed wrong to not know what I want to do growing up, upsetting to my mother if I didn’t know what I wanted to eat for dinner, and it’s still awkward to receive a party invite and want to RSVP with a “maybe”. It’s like we’re all walking around with a false sense of bravado, and that any sign of uncertainty will set us back in the Game of Life. But is it really that negative a feeling? Can doubt be harnessed as a quality of curiosity, of inquiry?

Turns out, Neel Chaudhuri, a theatre maker and educator from New Delhi has been banging on about this word for a number of years now. It started with his work, Quicksand, that he wrote and directed in 2017, based on a real life story about a social media trial of two ordinary people. Quicksand was a work with many crossing lines of religious, gender, and caste politics, set in the #MeToo movement. In making this play, Chaudhuri noticed that, “We have become a culture that is prone to statement, and partly because so much of our communication is expressed in public forums on the internet, we don’t hear ‘I don’t know’ enough, and we don’t hear reconsiderations of opinion.” Doubt has become a bad word, not seen as a genuine curiosity.

Sharmistha Saha, researcher-teacher at IIT Bombay, and theatre maker, also reflects on this intersection of statement and inquiry. She separates the two by creating distinction, “Expressing oneself, as long as it’s not harmful, is a fundamental right. But on that premise [of freedom of expression], doubt is very important as it leads us to the next question.” In Saha’s play Romeo Ravidas aur Juliet Devi, she probes into the politics of caste and privilege through the narrative of Shakespeare’s classic, and makes a choice where the oppressor caste fights for the underprivileged. In the play, “Doubt is very important as a resolution, because the upper caste cannot always be sure that they did the right thing. Doubt is necessary as a political force for the privileged to check themselves when they are positioning themselves to liberate the oppressed.” Without doubt and self-consciousness, the privileged can dangerously posture themselves as messiahs for the oppressed, without having to take a single glance inward at their contribution to the very oppression. And so, what started as an inquiry to affect change, then becomes a statement that cannot be retracted.

I have always considered myself doubtful because I am not confident in any decision I ever make, but until now, I didn’t think of it as a strength. In a meditation on this, I wondered about how we place process and product at opposite ends of a spectrum, and then thereby judge the product also on binaries of good and bad. Watching my peers create work, I often only engage with the process through stories and posts on social media. Then voila, suddenly I’m watching the finished product in a theatre, wondering sometimes how they got it right, and other times, how they got it wrong. As a theatre maker who is only one play old, I worry a lot about whether my first play was a fluke. I had a whole pandemic to mull the idea, write it down, and grow the confidence to make it. My biggest personal anxieties in the rehearsal room are ridicule, mockery, and shame from the team for not having an answer to everything. I used to think it imperative to know exactly how a scene unfolds — from its blocking, dialogue, composition, and design. But as a young maker, it’s impossible to have all the answers in the first go. Chaudhuri has also noticed this anxiety amongst young artists in their 20s, who have, he observes, “Protracted from making their first work because they want to be sure of the script, medium, idiom, before they put it out there. But you can’t be until you do it!” While this is highly relatable, I also understand Chaudhuri’s concerns with it — works that are completely sure of themselves give you an answer, rather than let you ponder a question. And if the process is open to doubt, it automatically allows for a “good” product because there is space in the process to muddle through the uncertainties, and then arrive at a clear picture.

Which brings us back to my original inquiry about the relationship of doubt as a dramaturgical quality in the process, versus the self doubt that one has to overcome to allow dramaturgical doubt to have space. At what point do self doubt and questioning merge to become an awkward marriage? Chaudhuri explains, “It’s useful to make a distinction between the work having a quality of doubt, and the work being vague. When artists are vague, they’re throwing their hands up and copping out.” It’s when the questions are too many, that the maker’s self doubt with the inquiry itself clouds the work, and audiences don’t quite “get it.” Chaudhuri, in audience feedback, invites the “not getting it.” He says that, “Doubt is actually asking a question and inviting the audience into that query without the expectation of a definitive answer.” 

I have left too many shows completely confused, I have sat in an audience not understanding what is going on before my eyes, I have run away from meeting peers whose work I didn’t get. I obviously know why I don’t like some pieces of theatre — sometimes I am not able to quieten my inner critic, sometimes my subjectivity feels estranged from the narrative, sometimes it’s just not to my taste, and sometimes it’s my bias. I allow myself to dislike things, but do I allow my audience to bring their whole personalities so fully while watching my work? Are audiences allowed to feel doubtful about a piece of theatre they watch? Bhagi Raman, who works in audience development, outreach, and community building for various arts organisations and projects, guides me through this question. She explains clearly, “Rarely will you find audience members who will hold space to find out where you are coming from. To expect them to come to you is a big expectation. Mostly, you are going to them.” To be at the receiving end of a doubtful audience is daunting, and it is easy to dismiss an unwanted opinion as something that their subjectivity could not engage with, but Raman stresses that, “A maker cannot decide who a piece is for, or not for. Every piece is for everyone.” I attended a recent feedbacking workshop devised by Das Arts and facilitated by Sofia Stepf of Flinnworks, where feedbackers were asked to frame their comments in the format of, “As a _______, I need _______.” For example one could say, “As a woman, I need more female perspectives.” Until then, I had become used to dismissing audience members’ personal subjectivities as reasons why they could not connect with a work, but framing my comments in this sentence allowed me to not dismiss subjectivities, and instead embrace them for the nuance and variety they bring in each perception. In this vein, Raman observes, “Almost always, people have the most astounding things to say that are rooted in their objectivity. The doubt is not what they walk in with, but what they leave with. Because of that doubt, discourse and discussion takes place. It is in that doubt that they’re trying to make sense of the experience they just had.” As makers, thought it is important, it’s difficult to hear this doubt out loud after a show. Raman’s suggestion, send a mole into the bathrooms after the performance to gather data and communicate it to the team, gently.

Doubt can often be unwelcome too. When it comes to teaching, Saha believes that she cannot bring her own doubts into the classroom. When she’s teaching, Saha has to be decisive. In the cultural and education systems that I grew up in, questions were not encouraged, and though things have changed, the power dynamic between student-professor still very much exists. Whether she likes it or not, a classroom is still a space of power. A teacher needs to have an authoritative voice. At the same time though, Saha says that, “Someone who is younger feels less equal, but that’s not true. Each of us have knowledge and are unique in our identities and experiences. No one knows more than the other.” It seems like Saha successfully balances this murky, doubtful duality — her principles of equality, with the necessity to teach in a stable environment. 

The dictionary definition of doubt is, “A feeling of uncertainty, or a lack of conviction,” but it need not have negative connotations. There is space for doubt in the arts today — both in the personal sense of self doubt, the artistic sense where doubt shines as a narrative quality, in an audience’s doubtfulness that opens discourse. If doubt can cripple ability, it can also allow for building resilience in staying with the doubt. If doubt is an “I don’t know,” it is also the beginning of finding an answer. If doubt is unconfident, then it is also the ability to express a lack of confidence. For me, the dramaturgy of doubt is the belief in the doubt itself. Ironic, huh?