‘When I wanted to study the Mahabharata, my tutor said it’s obscene. I said I wanted to study the entire epic’

Also, to my horror, I discovered that we had an advisory committee and that our finances and money were with the Sangeet Natak Akademi. In order to get our monthly budget, our finance officer had to go and stand outside the door of the man who was responsible for dishing out the money at the Akademi. I found Delhi to be a bureaucratic city, but since I was from Mumbai, with no clue about the bureaucratic structure of Delhi, I just cut through the red tape.

The place was run-down and without hope. I took up the challenge and I started work there. I realised I had to bring people together, to make them aware of their own self-respect, of their own dignity. I started out with a production of Ashad Ka Ek Din. People dismissed it as a radio play but I thought otherwise and went ahead. However, the problem was that there were no theatres. In those days there was only AIFACS. It was not air-conditioned, loud air-coolers were used, and there was a lack of lighting equipment. As a result, nobody knew what was going on onstage. So we built a stage in the yard at Kailash Colony. We put up the stage and the sets together ourselves and that helped to develop the confidence of putting a production together. At the same time we had created the right environment by sensitively responding to the playwright’s direction.

• LEHER KALA: How did you manage to instil in your students a deep sense of engagement with the theatre?

There have always been problems for students of drama. What happens after the theatre course? Where do you go? There is no theatrical profession in this country and you can’t be one of a troupe of wandering players. That is something I had realised fairly early, and all along. Therefore, I felt it was important to prepare the students for the theatre on the one hand, and for television and films on the other. From a fairly early stage in my association with the National School of Drama, I wanted to establish a connection with the Film & Television Institute (FTII). However, they were not very eager. That was rather sad.

It was important to provide NSD students with a very solid background. You cannot always assume that the character you play is some kind of worked-up individual who has to express himself in the way that he deems fit without thinking of the intellectual material which you’re fed, and analysing, studying the play. It’s very important that a student should work with the classics. The curriculum must reflect the entire theatre movement through the ages, the beginnings of theatre in India and its present situation. It’s extremely important to provide solid material that excites the student intellectually, which develops him emotionally, and which makes him understand the characters both in historical terms as well as in psychological terms.

Equally important, theatre is not a classroom exercise; it is a preparation for performance on the stage. It’s always assumed that an actor works without any kind of pre-meditation; it’s nothing of the kind. The theatre is a very disciplined activity. It is not an activity devoted only to individuals — it’s a group activity. And that group activity has no meaning unless there is an audience. Thus, the art of theatre has to be worked out in these terms.

Before I came to NSD, I did a great deal of work in Mumbai. The work I did was largely in the English language. I studied at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai. There was a very strong amateur theatre group there and I participated and contributed to that. It was all in the English language. After graduating, I worked with Sultan Padamsee. He was a genius. I learnt a tremendous amount from him. But I felt that there was a certain falsity there because we worked only in the English language.

In Mumbai and later, in Delhi, I had a Hindi tutor. I didn’t know whether he was tutoring me or I was tutoring him! When I wanted to study the Mahabharata, this man, who was an Arya Samaji, said to me, ‘Mr Alkazi, Mahabharata is very filthy, very dirty, it’s quite an obscene book.’ I told him I wanted to read the entire epic, all 10 volumes. That’s because it is very important for us in theatre to have, on the one hand, knowledge of the Mahabharata and the Ramayan, and on the other to study Hindi plays. I studied the work of Mohan Rakesh, who wrote the play Ashad Ka Ek Din, and Dharamveer Bharati, who was the editor of Dharamyug (magazine) at the time. I read and studied his Andha Yug.

• ESHA ROY: Do you watch Hindi movies? Have you seen Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool or Omkara, that are based on Shakespeare’s plays?

I don’t watch many Hindi movies. But early films, such as the work of Satyajit Ray, reflect a great deal of theatre treatment.

• RUCHIKA TALWAR: Isn’t theatre more a director or a playwright’s medium as opposed to an actor’s medium? People remember you for Tughlaq, Andha Yug, but very few remember Manohar Singh’s acting.

I think you’re mistaken. If people know a director’s work, it is also because of what he has been able to get out of the human material he has, his actors. As for the actor, his greatness does not come instinctively to him. If you see the variety of roles which a person like Manohar Singh has performed, and his development in terms of subtlety and sensitivity, in terms of communicability as an actor, it was something quite unique. My business as a director is to nurture the talent of the actor and to nurture it to its optimum level of refinement and sensitivity.

• ANURADHA NAGARAJ: Critics say that in the evolution of theatre in India, folk aspects of theatre have been lost along the way. Would you agree?

I do agree, but remember, a large number of the folk elements come from the countryside. You can’t expect the same kind of elements to come out of a metropolis like Delhi. Folk artistes have natural talent but also belong to a local tradition. Each region of India has its own folk form. As a folk actor you’d be part of a particular terrain, culture and society. Therefore, it would not pay to take a folk play from here to south India.

Also, it is difficult to perform a folk play on a proscenium stage as most folk plays happen at ground level, or a street corner, etc. So the treatment is entirely different.

• SHAILAJA BAJPAI: Compared to cinema, theatre and theatre actors haven’t become as popular as they could have been given theatre’s strong grassroots foundation. Why?

The theatre does not get you financial returns. You have a film, which costs an enormous amount of money, and with the right, adroit kind of handling of material, it can become a great hit. With that one film an actor can go on for years. In the theatre, you have to create your performance anew, day after day, night after night, no matter what. What the film actor really misses is a fine performance communicated to a receptive and intelligent live audience. No matter how high an actor or television star has gone, he always yearns to perform in front of a live, appreciative and sensitive audience.

My old students, now in cinema, say they miss lives performances. You must remember that when a film is shot, it is not shot on the basis of a logical development of the character over a period of time. It’s shot depending upon the location, the scenes at that location. The actor does feel handicapped.

• PALLAVI JASSI: Is Bollywood the only destination for every NSD graduate?

Firstly, Delhi is not a film centre. Secondly, theatre does not provide you with a livelihood. It’s a very demanding career, you’re exhausting yourself night after night and what do you get paid? Hardly anything.

• GAUTAM CHIKERMANE: How is it that in New York you have a sustainable theatre culture, an audience that looks beyond television and popular cinema, and why can’t that model work in India?

I think you tend to exaggerate the amount of success theatre has in New York.

• COOMI KAPOOR: But in London or New York, theatre is immensely popular. Here plays do not go beyond a few days. While cinema has touched everybody’s lives, theatre has not been able to reach out. Why?

Cinema and theatre are two different forms of self-expression. In my experience, the satisfaction of performing on stage is never exceeded by any performance in other media. Prithviraj Kapoor used to perform every Sunday at Prithvi Theatres. That is where he got his strength. It has also served to create many fine actors.

• COOMI KAPOOR: An actor might be enriched by his performances, but his success is gauged by the number of people he reaches out to, how many lives he touches. In that there seems to be a failure among theatre artistes.

I don’t agree. While I was the director of NSD, I had a few very moving experiences. Once, I was doing Ibsen’s Ghosts in Hindi. There was a girl called Anjana Chitnis, whose mother was connected to theatre. After a particular performance the mother came to my office and burst into tears. I was very embarrassed; I thought there was something wrong with the performance. But she said: “What I saw yesterday was the story of my life. That is how I destroyed the life of my husband.”

I don’t think you can compare experiences: when you go to the theatre it is another kind of live, immediate kind of emotional discharge which you share in and which moves you. It’s different from cinema.

Theatre is not about numbers alone, it is about quality. When I started out, I found it difficult to get theatres for the kind of plays I was interested in. So I developed a theatre, a space, in a building on Napean Sea Road in Mumbai. It was on the sixth floor and there were no lifts. But night after night, the place was absolutely full. A whole lot of people, despite their age and frailty, climbed up those steps to partake of these experiences. I did Euripides’ Medea. One morning after a performance, I was having breakfast, when the artist M.F. Husain came to visit. He came with his sketchbook. I went through it and was astounded: he had sat in the dark during the performance and made drawings of certain scenes. I was overwhelmed by the power that emanated from those drawings. I thanked him and handed the book back to him and he said, “They’re yours.”

• ANUSHREE MAJUMDAR: Your affinity for art, did it help you develop a visual approach to theatre? How difficult was that, back in the days when you lacked resources?

It’s not the financial constraints that cripple you, it is your lack of imagination. That is what distinguishes one director from another.

• ESHA ROY: When were you first interested in art and when did you start collecting it?

I started collecting at a very early age. I used to cut out paintings from books and stick them in my personal album. To the horror of my parents, I destroyed a great deal of the family library! I was fortunate to have been in Mumbai in the late 1940s, when there was a progressive movement in art called the Progressive Artists Group. I was very closely associated with that group. Husain was there, so were Tyeb (Mehta) and others. I would put up a large number of their exhibitions and they would also collaborate with me in the sense that I would get them to design sets for me. Husain designed some of my sets.

• COOMI KAPOOR: Do you feel that in India, there is a growing sense of intolerance towards the arts as shown by the recent cases against Husain?

Absolutely. There is. This has been the case in many societies. Here it is very recent and largely political.

• COOMI KAPOOR: But not enough artists have spoken up in support of him.

It’s very difficult for an artist to sustain himself in a situation like that. You need courage, resourcefulness. It also depends on the community of artists. What they feel is important for them. Many of them have had to suffer like Husain is suffering now.

• SHAILAJA BAJPAI: I heard that your father migrated to Pakistan during the Partition. Why did you choose to stay back?

That is correct. My father wasn’t one those Arab-Muslims who was orthodox, although he did wear a fez and other Arab robes all his life. In fact my sisters and I were tutored by an Arab teacher throughout our childhood. He believed Pakistan was going to be a free and liberal nation. Soon after he migrated, he became disillusioned and finally relocated with the family to Lebanon. Most of my family now lives in Lebanon and in the United States. As for me, I believe

I’m an Indian. I’m rooted in India and I pride myself on being an Indian. I have an Indian passport. I belong here.

(The transcript was prepared by Anushree Majumdar)