Our Roots

We grew up in various parts of India, but we all belong to the Bengali culture and ethnicity - the language canonized by Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda, and the literature of Rabindranath Tagore.

Each of us got into some stage performing as pre-school or elementary school kids, and we haven't got the fascination out of our system yet ! In the Triangle region of North Carolina, where all six of us came together for the first time, four of us (PRAM) were also founding members of an earlier theatre group called Carolina Theatre Workshop (CLTW). PRAMMS were among the many Indian-American and Bengali-American folks active in theatre in the Triangle area in the years following. For a while we ran an improv theatre group (now subsumed by PRAMMS) called Improv Drama of Indian-Americans of North Carolina (IDIA-NC). Eventually we realized that we had common interests in so many interrelated aspects of storytelling, stage and screen, that it did not make sense to try to separate the threads.

Hence PRAMMS.

Our View of Theatre

All the world's a stage. Including the stage itself, and the movie screen, and every other workplace. Or hobbyplace. This is how we see our roles in that grand drama forever playing out. For us, both the art and craft of theatre provide thrills.

Stage: The art of theatre, for us, is foremost about the exercise of empathy. Theatre helps us walk in other people's shoes for a mile. And putting those shoes on is the only thing that can make for good theatre - for the actor, but also for everybody else in the production crew. This means being open to the feelings of triumph and hurt of all. As the great theatre persona Shambhu Mitra (শম্ভু মিত্র) said, "Poetry speaks of ever deeper things... of a plane higher than our day-to-day utilitarian existence. Which we cannot enter if the masks we always wear are so tightly on our faces that we cannot take them off. And so, we have to ... ease the mind, make it simpler, accepting." (our translation).

For the craft, we take a product- and service-oriented view, in which everything we do, and avoid doing, both on- and off-stage, must enrich the effectiveness of the storytelling for the audience. If it is not serving the audience, it needs to be omitted.

Improv: Improvised theatre is a form of theatre in which the on-stage performers (actors) create the story, in large part or in whole, as they are performing. It is typically more interactive, taking audience input to seed scenes, or to craft the scene as it progresses. It can be likened to Indian Classical Music, where the performer also acts as the composer of the details of the music, while remaining true to the basic underlying mood or theme.

Units of performance are typically short. Single short scenes of two or three actors are common, or even shorter back-and-forth between audience and performers; however, long-form improv, typically more demanding and ambitious, attempts improvisational creation of stories comparing in length to traditional theatre.

Improv is one of the most accessible forms of theater where one can participate and have fun with very little previous experience. Those new to theater often find it a very easy entry, since there is nothing to memorize and the pieces can be quite short.​

At the same time, improv is very core to the concept of "living truthfully under imagined circumstances", the very definition of theatre according to the great Meisner. While most theatre professionals specialize in either traditional or improv theatre, almost all acknowledge the deep link between the two, and the role of improvisation as training to be truthful, not manipulative, in theatre.

Enough has been written and said about improv that those interested will not lack for sources. As a starting point, we can do no better than to suggest "Improvisation for the Theater" by Viola Spolin, who was instrumental in articulating the role of improvisation in training powerful natural actors. And in the Triangle, as in many other places, there are many professional improv theatre groups.

Screen: In many ways, movies up the ante for theatre. For the actor, honesty and naturalness is more important than ever, since the camera looks more closely than even front-row audience. The director has to envision the final production so strongly as to be able to evoke the right reactions in the right intensity in actors, out of order, as the shooting schedule demands. And the editor has to divine the vision that is in the mind of the director to put together exactly the right set of ingredients in the right way.

While it is possible to make at least short movies completely solo, by its very nature, moviemaking is essentially a team effort, as much as, and even more than, stage productions.