It is almost 125 years since the Tiatro was born with the initiative of Lucasinho Ribeiro from Assagao, Bardez, the village known for producing great Goans of great caliber. Though Tiatro was born in Bombay yet it created immense impact on Goan society in Goa. Tiatro and Tiaitrists of yesteryears took up this profession as a challenge not to make money but to bring about changes in Goan society and precisely because of this challenge Tiatros and Tiatrists of those days by using the platform of Konkani Stage succeeded in reducing immensely the curse of dowry, curse of caste system, inequality in society, arrogance of clergy, maltreatment of Mundkars by the Bhattkars, harassment of women and many other curses inflicted by our elders on our society. Without the platform of Tiatros and progressive Tiatrists of those days there would never be such a great improvement and change in our society. Because of this positive effect of Tiatros I salute the yesteryears Tiatrists who have done great sacrifices to keep this art moving and alive.
The early Tiatros were very educative since the early Tiatrists themselves had good character and home discipline in them by their disciplined parents especially by their mothers but within 25 years of its birth Tiatros went into the hands of wrong Tiatrists who were brought up like rowdies. They converted Konkani Stage as a platform to wash their dirty linen publicly; many used vulagirty and indecency in their terminology and in action because of which decent people stopped patronising Tiatros. Seeing all this dirt, Joao Agostinho Fernandes who is known as "Pai Tiatrist" for his great contribution in the promotion of Tiatros, remarked with tears in his eyes, ”It hurts me very much to see this great art of Tiatro formed by Lucasinho Ribeiro and nurtured by me is now sadly gone into the hands of "'ROSTAD' Tiatrists”.
Sadly now again this beautiful art of Tiatro seems to have gone into the hands of cheap and wrong Tiatrists since some of them are using vulgarity in words and in deeds from the Stage. Regrettably, the major portion of the audience loves this vulgarity indicating how low they are. I started watching Tiatros by sitting on the lap of my mother and according to my observation the Tiatrists who use indecency and vulgarity on the Stage to get cheap prominence from cheap audience are the ones who lack basic discipline at home from proper parentage, basic educational background and basic social background. For them the world is like a Pond for the Frogs and precisely because of this they bring a bad name for the Tiatros.
Unfortunately the so called big writers and directors are reluctant to control this vulgarity performed by the vulgar Tiatrists in their Tiatros. This vulgarity and indecency is performed by the cheap and vulgar comedians mostly by those who carry the prefix as comedian so and so. Decent audience call these comedians as Comedians "Burxe" who are responsible for lowering the greatness of Tiatros. They are so weak that as support for their identity they make use of the prefix as Comedians. The great comedians of yesteryears namely Jacinto Vaz, Anthony Mendes, Kid Boxer, Jepsis Hitler and Greg never identified themselves cheaply with the prefix as comedians. The yesteryears comedians were not known to be vulgar nor indecent for this reason people still remember them.
Because of the vulgarity in Tiatros people started talking ill of Tiatros now and if this vulgar trend does not stop, decent people will stop patronizing Tiatros as it happened earlier. Earlier to revive the interest in Tiatros to our luck God sent into this world Tiatrists like Minguel Rod who was a genius in this field and because he was so his Tiatros and songs during those days created a sort of revolution on Konkani Stage. Additionally, to woo better audience to Tiatros we had the gift of J.P. Souzalin, Alexinho de Candolim, C. Alvares, Alfred Rose, Nelson Afonso, Prem Kumar, Chris Perry-Lorna and others too. But now to uplift the degrading standard of Tiatros we will have none of the stalwarts of the type we had in the past. They are all dead and gone and sadly now it looks the Goan mothers do not possess the wombs to produce great Tiatrists of the type we had in the past.
Hence, it is now in the hands of big names on Konkani Stage to control and eradicate the vulgarity and indecency currently enacted by the vulgar Tiatrists. Display of female Brasiers and Panties is not a decent sign, touching the Aerial of the Radio Set to the private part of the male artiste to get range to start the Radio Set is not a decent act and singing songs with double meaning is surely an act of vulgarity at least as per the Goan tradition. Most of the current directors are at the mercy of Bhurxe comedians to write and perform comedy which has no link with the main story and for this reason they have to close their eyes to the vulgarity in their Tiatros. Most of the current directors are not full-fledged writers of their Tiatros in the sense that they write the main story, comedy is given in the hands of comedians having no link with the main story and "Cantos" to someone else. For this reason scripting of too many cheap or mediocre Tiatros in too short a period is possible. This was not happening with yesteryears directors for this reason they remained as great. They used to take long period to write and stage a Tiatro with a very good quality. They were all in one and there was nothing rental or borrowing from other artistes.
A. Veronica Fernande,
Candolim, Goa.
Tel:7507394349.