A profile in two voices of India’s most thought-provoking playwright in English, MAHESH DATTANI. Originally published in 2001.
It’s a June day. A breezy gust ruffles the spray of
magenta bougainvillea overhanging the intimate outdoor theatre at J P Nagar, Bangalore. A green
bamboo gate creaks onto the dramatic space. Muffled footfalls lead up the curve
of steps to a terracotta-bricked interior.
A study door opens. A
flourescent blue-green Macintosh squats atop a study table. An assortment of
books line a wall. Videos of Hindi film classics of the Fifties and Sixties are
stacked tall in a niche. Notes from Ella Fitzgerald’s honey-brown voice waft
through the air. A full-length mirror lines the length of the door. A futon
with a blockprinted spread hugs the wall adjacent to the window. The early
evening sun rides a shaft in.
A youthful man enters,
a quiet presence. Clad in a subdued orange khadi kurta, Kolhapuri chappals on
his feet. His gaze is unambiguous, his voice muted. The crescendo and
diminuendo of his laughter ripples through the space he has claimed for his
own. His hands form mudras in the air, the gold bangle on his wrist flashes as
he speaks, darting from past to present, from reality to flights to fancy
within the dimming of a spotlight.
He’s India’s most
lauded contemporary playwright in English, honoured by the Sahitya Akademi in
1998.
Labelled by theatre
scholars as the definitive voice of the Nineties and the millenium.
Back home from Lilette
Dubey’s Prime Time production of his incest-based play, “30 Days in September,”
which premiered to a standing ovation in Mumbai in May. It was commissioned by
the Delhi-based RAHI (Recovering and Healing from Incest), funded by the Ford
Foundation.
Off-stage, just pages
from the life of 43-year-old Mahesh Dattani:
I was 12 when my parents took me to watch a Gujarati play.
Before the play began, the atmosphere at Bangalore’s Ravindra Kalakshetra was
raucous. Everyone was yelling at each other: ‘Kantibai, kem cho’ and all that. Then, the bells rang, the lights
dimmed, there was an announcement, then loud music. The curtain went up, and
there was pin-drop silence. This surreal world unfolded, with make-up and
costumes. There were peccadilloes going on, who’s sleeping with whom and so on.
(Pausing for effect) At the end of
Act One, a gun went off. And somebody fell ~ in the audience!
My god! It was a play within a play! It was like magic,
suddenly breaking the boundaries of illusion and reality. I think that
influenced my theatrical technique very strongly. Because I always break those
spaces, going backwards and forwards between past and present, real time and
dream time. That experience was a major high for me.
I never really thought that I could be a part of theatre. (Reflectively) Being part of a
middle-class Gujarati family, it was just assumed that I’d join Papa’s business
after graduating in history, economics and political science from St. Joseph’s
College. Papa sold machinery for packaging and printing. He was a pioneer in
his field. Later, I did a course in marketing and advertising because I wanted
to be a copywriter. It was fashionable at that time. I tried it for six months,
hated it, then joined Papa’s business.
By then, I was with the Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT),
helping out with production. My first role was in Utpal Dutt’s Surya Shikar, done in English, directed
by Simha. I was in the chorus, one of two scrawny guys. (Guffawing) Every time we came on stage, the audience would burst
out laughing. We were just not coordinated!
It was the late Seventies. At that time, an old school
buddy, Bimal Desai, came up with an idea: “Let’s do a play together. You direct
and I’ll act.” After sifting through a pile of Neil Simon scripts, we chose
Woody Allen’s God. It’s so tweaky, so
funny. We recruited all our college buddies to fill the cast of twenty. We were
all so inexperienced! I must have been
about 21. Yet, we managed to get six house-full shows because of the student
community.
You know, I’ve directed more plays than I’ve written. This
may sound trite but it’s true ~ as a director, I enjoy the power. As a
playwright, I’ve absolutely no power. Of the plays I’ve directed, I’m most
proud of the staging of my play, Bravely
fought the Queen, in Delhi. It won the Sahitya Kala Parishad award for best
production in 1998.
(Passionately)
Quite frankly, I write because I’m a theatre person, not because I’m a writer.
It’s quite by chance that I became a playwright. At one point, when I was directing
European plays like In Camera,
Sartre, Euripides and all that, I decided I wanted to do an Indian play. I read
some translations. I loved Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence, the court is in
session, and Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq.
I was impressed by Badal Sircar’s Baki
Itihaas. But the English translations weren’t anywhere near the originals.
Maybe the plays don’t lend themselves to translation.
So I thought: why not try my hand at writing? That was in
1984. Where there’s a Will was the
result.
Whether as text or as tone, his words tear at the edge of
consciousness, blurring social constructs. He draws naked truths out of
long-shuttered closets, ferreting out themes beyond bedroom farces and
historical romances. His dialogue reeks of middle-class, urban Indian life
today, strewn with Hindi and Gujarati, charged with unspoken socio-cultural
subtexts. On the boards, invisible issues strut the stage, bringing the
audience face-to-face with its own moral subversions. His theatrical voice is
gender-sensitive, seeking out the lighter moments amidst unvoiced angst. He
often fines-tunes his plays in rehearsal with his Bangalore-based theatre
group, Playpen.
He describes ‘Where There’s a Will’ as an exorcism of the
patriarchal code through intimate sequences in the life of the money-centric
Mehta family. ‘Dance like a Man’ (1989)
explores the homegrown reality of the male classical dancer through the lens of
social acceptance, stemming from the playwright’s own six-year-long Bharatanatyam
stint under noted gurus Chandrabhaga Devi and U S Krishna Rao. As staged by Mumbai’s Prime Time, it did a
record hundred shows in India, London, Dubai and Colombo. ‘Tara’ (1990)
addresses the trauma that results from the separation of conjoined different-sex
Siamese twins, engineered to favour the male child. Some view it as a lens on
the gendered self, others as an alternate perspective on the feminine self in a
male-centric world.
1991 saw the first
staging of ‘Bravely Fought the Queen,’ dominated by hot-blooded,
fully-fleshed characters struggling to
breathe amidst the debris of urban double standards. The next year brought to
life his first commissioned play, ‘Final Solutions’, an unequivocal exploration
of communal strife at the request of Mumbai’s theatre giant Alyque Padamsee.
‘Do the Needful’, his
first radio play for BBC in 1997, delves into the social psyche of arranged
marriages Three others followed, including ‘Seven Steps Around the Fire,’
centred around the daily tribulations of the hijra or eunuch community, as
uncovered by a scholastic sleuth.
When Prime Time put ‘On a Muggy Night in Mumbai’ on the
boards in 1998, it punched the mainstage audience between the eyes. As the
first Indian play to focus openly on gay themes of love and partnership.
Off the page, just scenes from the life of Mahesh Dattani:
People keep saying to me: “Why do you write about such
depressing subjects?” (Shakes with
laughter) After Thirty Days in
September, a gentleman protested, “We can read about incest and all that.
But there’s no need to put it on stage.”
I’m not looking for something sensational, which audiences
have never seen before. Some subjects, which are under-explored, deserve their
space. (Contemplatively) After all,
incest can happen in your family or mine, wherever there’s a child and an
adult. It’s no use brushing these issues under the carpet.
I have to take inspiration from real life and make it my
own. Unless theatre is about the human condition, it doesn’t always work. Even
if it’s a commissioned script, like the one I did for a film on HIV, Ek Alag Mausam, that’s the only way I
can write. I met over 25 people who were HIV-positive. I saw a person dying in
an AIDS hospice. It was so overwhelming. I just wanted to get away. (Pausing) Finally, I thought: “What if I
discover I’m HIV-positive tomorrow? What will that mean to me?” It will mean
I’m in touch with my mortality.
It may sound bizarre but, to me, gender never was an
issue. I’m not conscious of masculine or
feminine expression. I am who I am. At times it may be categorized as feminine,
at times as masculine. It doesn’t bother me. But peculiarly, it’s a big deal to
others. It took me a while to realize that my perception was different from
that of others. It again became grist to the mill, a question of challenging people’s
perceptions. That’s why I have titles like Dance
like a Man, or Bravely fought the
Queen! The latter is based on that
Hindi poem about Jhansi ki Rani. Khoob
lari mardani, woh to Jhansi wali rani thi! If she’s brave, then she’s like
a man! She can’t be a woman and be brave. Isn’t that ridiculous?
What’s the big deal?
OK, genitally you belong to one gender. (Casually) But beyond that, it’s all social construction.
In Dance like a Man,
the father doesn’t want his son to carry on being a dancer because he sees that
as a woman’s profession. He makes a deal with his daughter-in-law that she can
continue dancing if she’ll get her husband away from it. She asks why. He says,
“A woman in a man’s world may be considered progressive, but a man in a woman’s
world is pathetic.” There’s always
laughter about that. In the next line, she says, “Perhaps we aren’t progressive
enough.” There’s always silence after that one.
In a sense, there’s a complicity when the audience agrees
with the politics of a character, and are suddenly put into a spin when it’s
turned on them. It’s the same in On a
Muggy Night in Mumbai. There’s a dialogue between a gay man and a lesbian,
who’re very good friends. She tells him: “If you were a woman, we would have
been in love.” He turns round and says, ‘If you were a man, we would have been
in love.” When she says that, there’s laughter. When he says his line,
laughter. Then, she says, “If we were heterosexual, we would have been
married.” (Dramatically) Both of them
go “Aaaaaaaaaaa!” No laughter there.
I see all my plays as socio-political. (Passionately) That’s how I see Final
Solutions, which deals with communal tension. I don’t delve into the
machinations of the higher powers, how they manipulate events, although there
are strong overtones that it’s all politically engineered. When Alyque
approached me to write it ~ this happened before the Babri Masjid incident in
1992 ~ I wasn’t sure I was capable of doing it.
I’ve based it on a riot I’d read about during the tazia festival in Ahmedabad where,
traditionally, the rath or temple
chariot is taken out by Muslims and Hindus. That particular year, there was
some communal tension, especially when the rath
went into a Muslim area. In Final
Solutions, the rath became a
symbol for projecting ideas and images of self through gigantic idols.
I like to focus on people who aspire to freedom, but are
somehow bound by society. (Pushing his hair back) That’s where my dramatic tensions arise. I realize how
empowered I am as an urban, upper middle-class Indian. We can live our lives
the way we want to, whether you’re single, unattached, without kids, or single
with kids. No matter how disapproving society is, it allows you a life
(Thoughtfully)
What if I wasn’t so empowered? What would my issues, battles, struggles be,
then? All my characters are women who are out there in some way. Either
sexually expressive as in Bravely Fought
the Queen. Or in some ways handicapped like Tara and Chandan in Tara. That’s what makes them come alive,
the fact that they have battles to fight.
I don’t write about any subject until I see where the
dramatic conflict lies. I usually choose
the urban family unit because, in our times, that’s where I feel the conflict
is. Perhaps it was the same in Tennessee Williams’ or Eugene O’Neill’s time.
But if you look at modern American playwrights, they hardly ever write about
the family because that’s not where the conflict lies.
Though I deal with grave subjects, my optimism seems to
somehow come through. Despite the sense of loss, despite the characters’
turmoil, there’s always a funny side to it. Maybe it’s just the way I am. I
haven’t figured that one out.
When I sent Lilette the script of Thirty Days, I said, “Look, it’s very grim. There’s not even one
scene where there’s an iota of humour.” She had a couple of readings, then told
me, “You’re such a goose, Mahesh. That scene is so funny!” I don’t know how, it
just comes through
(Bringing his
fingertips together) Playwriting, of course, is really for posterity. In
theatre, the only thing that stays is the written text. Everything else is so
transient. That’s the magic of theatre. You create an illusion and it’s gone.
It’ll never be the same again.
On stage, he assumes a
diametrically altered avatar. Gone is
the tentative persona that drapes the everyday being. Gone is the sensitive
individual who laughs at life’s uneven trajectory and at the puckish imp within
himself.
He takes Bangalore by
storm in the recent BLT production of “Henry IV,” the 1934 Nobel laureate
Pirandello’s classic satire on the madness intrinsic to all mankind. In the
title role, he alternates between sackcloth and satin, ranting and reasoning,
unleashing spine-chilling mood swings that mirror our inner turbulence. At
moments, he flashes with the fury of the misunderstood, at others he analyzes
the human condition with formidable lucidity. Irrevocably, he unlocks layers of
the character with undeniable histrionic finesse.
He’s inspired by the
total theatre experience, whether as an actor, a director or a playwright. To
him, all the world’s his stage. Whether it’s a Playpen production in Bangalore,
Border Crossings in London, or Prime Time in New York. It’s the ebb-and-flow of
audience-actor interchanges that are the elixir of his life.
His theatrical acumen
has drawn applause from around the globe. In a half-page review, New York Times
writer Stephen Bruckner felt, “Dattani is a canny and facile writer, and there
is nothing (in his writing) that is alien to American audiences. “ At home,
Alyque Padamsee thanked him for giving “sixty million English-speaking Indians
an identity.”
He built Rangamane in
Bangalore as a studio space for the performing arts in 1998. He’s held playwriting
workshops in India, and teaches an inter-cultural course on theatre at Portland
State University, Oregon, as a visiting professor since 1996.
In the theatre of life, just thoughts between the acts of Mahesh Dattani:
Ultimately, all theatre is about the actors and the
audience, you know. (Flinging out his
arms) It’s the actor’s chemistry. Everything is geared towards that,
whether you’re a playwright or a director or a set designer. That’s quite a
power trip. I enjoy acting, directing, playwriting for different reasons.
Clarity is something I work on constantly. Some ideas may
seem very obvious to me. But the actors may say: “What is this?” I’d say:
“Don’t you see it?” And they’d say, “No, where is it?” That’s when I realise
it’s in my head. I need to bring it out, perhaps through the action.
(Toying with a pen in
his hand) I like to keep a lot in the sub-text. I hate it when actors
expect me to spell out things, which means they don’t trust their acting
ability. With amateurs, it’s disturbing when they try to paraphrase.
Sometimes, actors don’t trust audiences. I don’t know why.
The actors are not more intelligent than the audience. I hate those presumptions. The audience has
the advantage of sitting back and taking it all in. You’ve got to take feedback from the
audience, whether it’s silence or laughter or applause.
Do I have influences? (Meditatively)
Tennessee Williams was my favourite playwright for long. I realize Tara has shades of Glass Menagerie. But that was involuntary. I admire Tendulkar very
much. I find his plays very progressive. He doesn’t write from a predominantly
male perspective, either. His characters are so grounded, regardless of their
gender. I’d love to direct Tendulkar’s Sakharam
Binder, but I can see how it doesn’t work in English. I wonder if English
theatre audiences in India have even heard of Vijay Tendulkar or Mahesh
Elkunchwar. I’d say they’re both the creators of modern Indian drama.
(Fiercely) I feel writing in English, as we do in India, is our
strength. When Prime Time did Dance like
a Man and Muggy Night in Mumbai
in New York, they didn’t tone it down. Now, in Muggy Night, there’s a whole scene written in Hindi. Nor did we
change words like ashtapadi or Gita Govinda, in Dance like a Man. The audiences loved it; they got the context. It
was very empowering as Indians to say: “This is who we are, and this is how we
speak our language.”
I hate the term ‘post-colonial’. I resent the way it is used
to classify south Asian writing. Isn’t American writing, Australian writing,
also post-colonial? (Throwing up his
hands) It’s one way of negating our 5,000 years of culture. In a sense,
we’re the ones who’ve colonised them. It’s like what they’re doing with Chicken
Tikka Masala and Balti cuisine. We’ve done taken their language and made it our
own!
.
Surrounded by theatre buffs at the old-world Koshy’s
restaurant in Bangalore, he talks and breathes theatre, recites from old plays
and new, casting around for fresh talent. He listens to all-comers, making eye
contact a personality trait. Over endless cups of coffee, he recalls prized
productions and projects into the future.
Attending a recent documentary film festival on the
burning issues of our time, he reflects on the plight of the Kuruba tribe at
the Nagarahole sanctuary, then rises to defend the alternate perspective of a
film-maker. Mulling over provocative themes, engaging intellectually with
tourism-related paedophilia or the shadow of the beauty myth on urban India, he
interacts spiritedly with potent ideas.
His dreams for the future envision a shared space for
Kannada and English theatre. Perhaps a theatre
village named Natyagram, along the lines of Protima Gauri’s Nrityagram,
outside Bangalore.
Between curtain calls, just passages from the average Indian
life of Mahesh Dattani:
I was absolutely floored when I got the Sahitya Akademi
award. It was the happiest moment of my life. It’s quite a trip for me to be
mentioned in the same breath as Shashi Deshpande and A K Ramanujam, names I
revere. (Laughing long and strong) I thought they’d never give it to me
because I write in English and about horrible subjects. Besides, it’s an award for literature, not
for drama.
Initially, my family was concerned about me. But it was a
big moment for my late father when I received the Sahitya Akademi award. He
felt very proud when Alyque did Final
Solutions in Mumbai, and when Bravely
fought the Queen was done in London.
I joked with him then. I said: “I’ve done Mumbai, I’ve done
London. Next stop: New York.” But New York happened in July; I lost him in
March. When I was reading the half-page New York Times rave review of Dance like a Man, the first thought that
struck me was: “I wish my father was here!” (Silence
for a few moments) It was
actually a sad moment for me because he wasn’t there to share it.
My parents adapted to my life well because I achieved a
modicum of success. If I was a failure or unrecognised, I don’t know how they
would have felt. They’d probably say: “Why do you want to do all this?” The
important thing is that I can earn a living out of what I’m doing. I’ve
received a fair amount of recognition. I guess I’ve been a good boy. That’s
what parents want from their children, don’t they?
He’s dedicated the
Penguin edition of his Collected Plays, published in 2000, thus: “For my
parents, Gaju and Wagh: ‘Look! I’m dancing like a man!’
The stage fan whirrs.
Simon and Garfunkel’s ageless lyrics play on. The curtain comes down. But the
spotlight remains on Mahesh Dattani.
(This interview was originally published in Man's World in 2001).
.
