Just the page, off-stage

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!

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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).

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Theatre: Tim Supple's "A Midsummer Night's Dream'

Shakespeare's Indian summer

(Originally written in 2006)

What could possibly be new about yet another production of  A Midsummer Night's Dream, possibly one of Shakespeare's most tightly constructed plays? British director Tim Supple's interpretation at the height of the Indian summer in April 2006 provides an answer. He engages with almost every aspect he could possibly experiment with.

Touring New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata en route to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Complete Works Festival at Stratford-on-Avon in June, Supple's rendition "creating tomorrow" through collaboration between the British Council and Hutch comes through as a spirited radical encounter that leaves no one cold. It proves to be more performance than potent poetry, enmeshed in the crossed strands between stardust magic and magnetic love play. 

 

Breaking away from the purist English tradition, the former Young Vic artistic director and RSC associate presents this first British Council commissioned theatre production through breakaway ideation, daring his audience to lose themselves in a theatrical thicket of questions. With a plot familiar to most urban Indians, Supple is on firm ground.

By the last scene of this dramatised dream at the open-air Buck's Theatre in Chennai, we want to scream aloud about basic issues. Will this production with an Indo-Sri Lankan cast work with an audience in Iceland or Indonesia? Why do we soon feel at home with Shakespearean poetry interwoven through seven languages? Do elements from bharatanatyam, kalaripayittu, malkhamb, therukoothu, bhangra and kathakali fuse into seamless body language that carries the narrative through?

As an audience, what we carry home to revisit are dramatic visual stimuli, enhanced by set and costume designer Sumant Jayakrishnan's inputs and brilliant lighting conceptualised by Zuleikha Chaudhari. Of a satin-clad stage space for a fairytale, swept away with a flourish to reveal bare red earth, seething with erotic encounters and bestiality between poetic interstices. Of a paper-clad wooden grid that has its surface ripped to shreds as characters leap through it in sexual pursuit, in playful chase, in fluent entrances and exits. Of silken swathes that entrance us as they fuse fluidly to form a hammock for the fairy queen's dream turned nightmare. Of agile characters suspended between heaven and earth on ropes, challenging life on intermediate planes. Of rich costumes donned and doffed as characters flit between identities. Of a crisscrossed mesh onstage that reflects the tangled lives at play.

Two years in the dreaming, rehearsed over seven weeks at the Adishakti theatre at Pondicherry, with a 22-member Indo-Sri Lankan cast from a shortlist of 60 auditioned in Mumbai last July, what pivots does this production rest on? Two obvious influences surge to mind. Peter Brook's 1970 Stratford staging with its trapezes and circus-like physicality, its players in primary colours, pared down to the essential Shakespeare. And Czech critic Jan Kott, who defined it as a "very powerful sexual play."

 As we watch the youthful rough and tumble onstage, each move imbued with forest grace, a tropical heat surges through the performance under the boughs, as night birds screech and call overhead. Real life adds a special soundtrack to Australia-born Devissaro's nuanced score, rendered live by N. Tiken Singh, Kaushik Dutta and D. Prakash. But one element remains a puzzle a lingam-like `singing stone' by a simulated water body in the foreground, perhaps a tool for Puck's spells, which chose to remain silent during the closing performance in Chennai.

For a play often interpreted, even by intelligences like Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, Utpal Dutt and Habib Tanvir, what makes Supple's rendition special? Perhaps he sums up its basic premise best in the production brochure: "I worked with an extraordinary range of artists. We had sessions where realistic actors worked with dancers and folk artists worked with experimental physical performers. We had musicians, singers and children. And most interesting of all, people acted in whatever language was most natural to them. Dialogues sprung up between English and Bengali, Hindi and Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Sinhalese."

Supple adds, "It was clear that our production had to be multilingual: to restrict ourselves to performers who worked in English would be to miss out on a wealth of different ways of making theatre and telling stories of seeing life and our trials of love, terror and social conflict that make up the canvas of the play. It would also be a lie. India is multilingual, Indian theatre is multilingual and whatever else a Shakespearean play might do, it should seek to reflect the time and place in which it is made with vivid honesty."

That's essentially what sets this production apart. Its honest South Asian multiculturalism. Has that led to an exotic, export-oriented experience? Are there neo-colonial notes underpinning the venture?

Not if we tune in to the cast and crew, who resonate with total theatre. Joy Fernandes, who plays an irresistible Bottom, recalls the physical rigour of rehearsals. The result? Impeccable body interfaces and pacing. Perfect tableaux. Surcharged emotional exchanges. Chandan Roy Sanyal, who dons Lysander's role, says, "I couldn't quite understand this character, until Tim explained one day: `He's a poet, who's in love with the idea of being in love.' After that, it was much easier. I enjoyed doing some of Shakespeare with the lyrical sweetness of Bengali."

Looking back, Supple remembers weekly sessions where the cast grappled with a key issue: `What is the play all about?'

With mixed feedback from Indian audiences, even those stunned by the production's integrity and aesthetics now wonder: how will it be received at the Swan Theatre at Stratford? Will purists be up in arms? Sprightly Yuki Ellias, who plays Hermia, is unequivocal in her opinion: "They will love us."

That's the quintessential challenge as Supple and his well-honed ensemble do a reality check on whether all the world's their stage.

(The Hindu Business Line, 2006)

Theatre: Letters from Tentland

(Originally written in 2007)

WHO are you?

WHERE have you come from?

WHERE is your home?

ARE  you going back?

A grey mother tent, on the bare Ranga Shankara stage at Bangalore, gives birth to six others, amidst swirling questions about individual identity.Each tent with a view pulses to life. They spin, twirl, collide, crawl, to choreograph our worst fears about our globalized world. About dislocation. About territorial strife. About nationhood, exile, longing and belonging. In an hour, each of us are in the thick of an identity crisis, provoked by ‘Return to Sender — Letters from Tentland,’ a dance theatre production by brilliant German director-choreographer Helena Waldmann, staged on September 7, 2007.

Six young Berlin-based actresses of Iranian origin are the cloaked faces of this extraordinary journey between continents and cultures. The tent as a metaphor for our times provokes images from our collective memory. Of itinerant labourers in Bangalore. Of Palestine. Of strife-torn Aghanistan. Or even Sri Lanka. And we acknowledge that this production, under auspices of the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, redefines political, avant-garde theatre as a revitalizing force, as it is staged en route from Kabul and New Delhi to Colombo.

Theatrically, the narrative takes precedence over experimentation, however unfashionable within the contemporary artistic context. Postcards from nowhere yoke Berlin with Teheran, then pit skyscrapers against interior landscapes, the exiled against imaginary homelands, governments against the individual. Projections on a foregrounded screen send affirmative correspondence to six Iranian actresses in Teheran, from Waldmann and her cast, signed off with “love from H.”

Who are these shadowy women, whose absence permeates the performance? They are the lifeblood of this show’s precursor, titled “Letters from Tentland,” a poignant commentary about womanhood in Iran, the offspring of a 2004 Waldmann workshop with Iranian actresses/ dancers in Teheran. The tensile creation premiered at  Teheran’s International Fadjr Theatre Festival, touring 17 countries over 16 months, before Iran banned it in 2005.  The show exploited loopholes to edge past the censors, for a solo woman could sing for a mere 20 seconds, and even a phantom was forbidden to dance. But monologues, slides, and projected letters proved perfect ploys.

Interviewed in Bangalore on September 6, Waldmann recalls her inspiring encounters with the feisty Iranian actresses, who couched their angst about their lives, both personal and political, as letters to her.  For instance, ‘Director, what are you doing to us? You change the rules every other day!’

She backtracks to their first workshop: “I asked them to look out of a window, then write a letter to Teheran. One wrote: ‘Please God, come back from holiday.’ They are totally lost. No one cares about their plight. They need help.”

The 2005 ban upset Waldmann. She stresses, “As an artist, I felt that I couldn’t just do another piece as if nothing happened. I asked the actresses from Berlin to watch ‘Letters from Tentland’ and somehow overwrite it.” The title of the original, slashed in the poster of the Bangalore show, traces that parallel trajectory.

The Berlin actresses drew on their own experiences, their dual identities, their constant search for a home. Within light tents once used by their Teheran predecessors, their metaphorical mobility suggests both home and the world. Their fears, their dreams, their plea for tolerance, imbue the moving tents, in wordless communication as in passionate encounters. Each layered resonance instigates another heart-rending quest, as their missives to Teheran bounce back, marked ‘Return to Sender.’

Waldmann’s sharing is profoundly moving: “In Palestine and Afghanistan, they saw ‘Return to Sender’ not as art, but as part of their lives. They wonder: how can a country like Germany create a piece that seems to be a warfield? The tents tell them it’s not about rich people or the lucky ones. In Kabul or Ramallah, it was important for them to see that others also have a hard life, even in Germany. You cannot imagine what it means to have men sitting in the audience, crying.”

How do the participants, equally fluent in Farsi and German, feel about the transformative experience, which has already toured 10 countries, including Kenya and Serbia-Montenegro? “We are Iranian in our language, food, music and customs. But German is our mother tongue, Berlin our home city,” responds Sanam Afrashteh, cosy on a sofa at their Bangalore hotel. “Where do I locate myself? Does this have to be geographically defined?”  

 Niloufar Shahisavandi adds, “I pick up what I like from both cultures, to create my own somehow. That’s the only way I can handle this situation.”

Signalling the lack of a red carpet for refugees in the first world, a tearful Javeh Asefdjah sighs, “For me, Berlin is nice. It wasn’t so for my parents. My mother now lives in Teheran. It was tough for her to be in a new country with no language, no job, no friends. Yet people ask me: ‘How can she live with the hijab? Doesn’t she want to be free?’ Each of us have stories like this.”

How tough is it to identify an identity? Pujeh Taghdisi, who came to Germany at eight, revisited Teheran, only to discover, “I went back to the streets of my childhood, to a bakery to buy bread. The man there asked, ‘You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?’ It’s hard to accept. But yes, I am.”

How relative is freedom? How real is fear? Beyond news bulletins, they investigate blood, sweat and real courage. Pujeh says, “In Kabul, during the post-show interaction, when we invite either the men or the women backstage, we were all crying. We met strong, fiery girls of 15 or 16, who had set up their own theatre groups, fighting for open spaces for the next generation. One girl had come to Kabul from Herat. She knew that, when she returned, her family wouldn’t accept her any more. But she took the risk.”

Salome Dastmalchi, the only trouper unafraid of the Kabul visit, took courage from a 1995 family holiday in strife-torn Israel. She recalls, “In Afghanistan, the women hug you, give you so much love. You learn how to care about people.”

“We’re also discovering that if you have a place inside you that you call home, then you don’t need to have a country that you belong to, or a nationality that binds you. You can be strong and say: wherever I am, is home,” concludes Sanam, whose father returned to Iran for two weeks to stay on for 16 years. Perhaps that is the vital clue to global citizenry or, in the words of an onstage monologue, to these ‘passport photographs from nowhere.’ 

 (The Week, 2007)

Theatre: Simon McBurney and Complicite ~ 'Measure for Measure'

 (Note: this interview took place in 2005)


SIMON MCBURNEY is impossible to label. On stage, he has the unfathomable energy of waves that lunge at the foot of cliffs, tentatively reaching for the skies. Off it, his restless eyes, his intense body language, his quicksilver tongue, couch life as a theatre of possibilities.

That's what surges through when Complicite — the loose-knit, multi-cultural performing ensemble he formed in Paris in 1983 with Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni — presented Shakespeare's ambiguous "Measure for Measure" in Mumbai and Bangalore in November as a torrent of stagecraft and high-tech wizardry, a liquid flow of uninterrupted scenes and text that writhe, seethe and sweep spectators away by sleight of theatre. At its very core is artistic director McBurney, playing the duke in disguise as a friar, a star even amidst a cohesive, brilliant ensemble. Even those initially sceptical tend to exit as converts to the McBurney stage spell.

Bold deviations



No wonder the legendary Peter Brook said, "Simon McBurney and Complicite have created their own tradition and this is why they are so special, so valuable." With this production, McBurney respects the text, yet subverts it as only a true blue iconoclast can — by introducing cinema-like staging, by visual stage cues that run counter to speeches without blurring the foci, by yoking Shakespeare to sexual politics, boldly deviating into contemporary social commentary.

What makes McBurney one of the most talked-about directors on the world stage? Was it his experience of studying with legendary French mimes Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaultier? Does it stem from his American father and Irish mother, besides a Cambridge education steeped in Shakespeare?

McBurney recalls that he chose to stage "Measure for Measure" in 2004 as a self-confessed "theatre-maker, not director", mainly because Nicholas Hynter of the U.K. National Theatre wanted him to co-produce "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

"That was too obvious for me. So I chose this one. But when I read it again, I found I didn't understand it at all. I wanted to be challenged deeply, to be completely lost, and little by little to crawl out of that place of unknowing into another equally uneven piece of ground where I feel that I am fully engaging with the text," chuckles McBurney, bleary-eyed yet trooping on gamely, between five back-to-back shows at Bangalore's Ranga Shankara . "That's precisely why I wanted to do it. I didn't want to fit into what other people want me to do. My brother describes me as constitutionally disobedient. I'm interested in the limits of things."

McBurney constantly redefines himself within theatre by choosing alternate assignments. Such as directing Al Pacino in "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" in 2002. Or directing Haruki Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes" the next year. Or playing Leontes in an eight-player production of "A Winter's Tale" in 1992.

Was it a rebellion against existing theatre of the Eighties that impelled the Theatre du Complicite? "I wanted to make theatre that I wanted to play, what I'd want to see as a theatregoer," he recalls, his fingers brushing his thinning hair out of his eyes. "I tend to respond to my environment, to criticism, to what I read. To me, it means being alive to the circumstances around. Usually, I feel: Right now, I want to make this."

Was France a turning point in this life? "At 19 or 20, I was quite well-known for doing comedy, invited to perform on radio and TV. But I was distressed by the nature of the machine unfolding in front of me. I wanted to run away from it. At the same time, my father died," says McBurney intensely, replaying past scenes. "It was important to be in another environment, to start thinking, talking and dreaming in another language for four years. It gives you a more powerful perspective on the world. Besides, Paris in the Eighties was much more cosmopolitan than London. Shows by troupes from Poland, Germany, Italy and the Far East were very well attended."

Theatrical baggage



What theatrical baggage did he jettison in Paris? "I began to think much more about the nature of action on stage. In other words, what you do is as important is as important as what you say, what you see is as important as what you hear," McBurney explains, amid a flurry of gesture. "In Britain, we call people who come to the theatre the audience, those who listen, while the French call them `les spectateurs,' those who watch. There's even that fundamental semantic difference."

A difference reflected in Complicite's startling forays beyond 28 in theatre. Such as a radio production of their lauded play "Mnemonic" for BBC 3, and collaboration with John Berger on a radio adaptation of his novel, To the Wedding. Even a multi-disciplinary installation performed at a disused tube station. But then, McBurney has also done a theatrical piece for the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, triggered by Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, "a piece I didn't understand and which I wasn't even sure I particularly liked."

Understanding McBurney can be as confusing as his radical, raw and questioning forays into the nature of the theatrically possible. How has he liberated Shakespeare from the tired British tradition? "The English tradition of playing him belongs to the intellectuals, the upper middle classes. It's become a bit of an enclave, which doesn't reach other people," he muses. "In other cultures, because you're not subject to tradition, you can be much freer with Shakespeare. It's important to not feel fear about not conforming to how your culture expects it to be."

Indian experience



Was playing "Measure for Measure" on Indian stages a liberating experience? "It's hard work. How do you speak Shakespeare and free it? How do you perform it and free it?" replies McBurney, rising from the empty auditorium to re-energise himself for the last show in Bangalore. "As we encountered three different theatre spaces, including the Jamshedji Bhabha and the Prithvi in Mumbai, we discovered so much about how to play this play, how we relate to each other, about the intimate nuances of the text because we are able to measure each show against the others.''
 
McBurney concludes with a paean to Indian audiences, "In India, we felt a true exchange with the audience, who participated through their concentrated listening, their sophisticated understanding of the language. It wasn't the false exchange of coming to India on a holiday and supplying money to an economy. So, we take back a deep sense of meaning, a sense of hope that is rare in our world. It is a gift of such preciousness that it is almost indescribable."

Cueing in to McBurney


On Shakespeare: Shakespeare writes for a continuous present. He was a great poet who didn't remain a prisoner of his time, unlike other writers like Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher.

On Complicite: We don't have a set company. This is part of the economic reality of the 20th Century. Yet we aspire to be a consistent group with a high degree of creativity. Like a deep pool in a river, some of us go away, do others things, then come back.

On Measure for Measure: I didn't understand the play at all in the beginning. Through it, I explored the relationship between power and sexual politics. Shakespeare's perception of the exploitation of women by men was very dark. In Mumbai, it hit a political chord because of the recent clampdown on dance bars, which echoed Angelo's war on licentiousness.

On Indian influences: Habib Tanvir's Naya Theatre was important for me. So were Kathakali and other traditional forms. And Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury...

(The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 2005)

*       *        *

Measure for Measure: Bangalore 2005 

Ranga Shankara. November 16 to 18. 

Complicite's Measure for Measure, disconcerts us by bringing us face to face with a study of sexual politics, cloaked as power play. Perhaps a return to Elizabethan morals. It unearths questions that make us squirm: how does celibacy differ from chastity? What did Shakespeare, then 40, have in mind in this seldom-staged play?

Cinema-like in its multiple foci, Orson Welles-intense in its accents, McBurney's presentation sets a searing, interval-free pace, where scenes collide, where the text blurs, then coalesces into redefinitions for individual actors and viewers alike. The mood is relentless right from the haunting opening scene, where rain projections soak the stage floor, lovers embrace passionately and a cigarette glows in the distance.

Warmth is defined by the lack of it, politics by its present context, sex by its primary drive. This polemical, hard-driving interpretation is defined by its desire to deconstruct, then reconstruct, the Bard for our time. Its grey spaces are populated by the lecherous Angelo and double-talking Bush (on a monitor), by timeless sexual exploitation and social hypocrisy.

McBurney does not tamper with the text, but gives us double-edged technical clues to an insidious underlayer, that initially puzzles us, then make us clutch at our seats once we gauge its true import. How dues he cue us in? By prisoners dressed in Guantanamo Bay orange. By spying on intimate conversations through video devices. By layering the floor with tantalising checkerboards. By dressing sex workers like today's porn stars. By using mikes to couch aggression and antagonism, a la TV talk shows.

The soundscape is a dramatic overlay, yet immeasurably potent. The trendy gear echoes today's vivid street life. The overhead bulbs impact the shifting power equations, as much as the players ranged at stage-edge. Their constantly dissolving tableaux and forays through the audience, highlighted by Paul Anderson's brilliant lighting design, add up to a staging that is unforgettable, intangibly disturbing.

Because of the concluding twist, of minimal impact when read, feels like a blow in the solar plexus when Measure for Measure plays out after an unrelenting 120-minute, intelligence-led assault on our senses. Because McBurney provokes us with haunting images — such as Isabella/ the Madonna on the floorboards as she penetrates Angelo's moral turpitude. Or the rear screen that allows us to glimpse a shadowy tree beyond the stage, as we catch our collective breath. Even Angelo's white shirt stained with the blood that was not his to spill at will.

Beyond technical wizardry and stagecraft, what the audience will ultimately cherish is Complicite as an outstanding acting ensemble. Especially the subtly shaded duke, played by the inimitable McBurney as a character of unusual emotional intelligence. And Naomi Frederick's Isabella, whose delineation drew gooseflesh and tears with felicity.

With due respect to Shakespeare, it was the surreal mating of The Globe with Ranga Shankara that was the true measure of this production. Take another curtain call, Complicite!

(The Hindu Metroplus, 2005)

Theatre: King Lear live at the Globe

The exterior of the Globe theatre

(Note: Originally published in 2001)


Shakespeare is no stranger to a child brought up in independent India, steeped as we are in the bard’s work, quoting lines off-the-cuff at every suitable (or unsuitable) occasion, wandering through his complete works as if through familiar terrain.

All my life, I’ve wondered what it would be like to watch a Shakespeare play at the Globe. Then, out of the blue, during the 27th British Council Cambridge Seminar 2001, there we were watching King Lear one wet July afternoon at that superbly reconstructed venue.

I pinched myself, and a few of my 50 seminar companions from 34 countries, to find out if it was true. I’d always imagined the Globe as a fairly posh theatre, acoustically sound, audience-friendly and perfect for the performer.

That afternoon, I realised how far from the truth I was. The rain poured indiscriminately on everyone in the yard, including the Fool who provided choric comments, perched atop a pole.

Our wooden benches on the ground floor of the three-tired seating arrangement, with ornate balusters, lacked backrests, and hired cushions for a pound each made the three-hour-15-minute rite of theatre fractionally more comfortable.

For the Globe we visited, a reconstruction of the 1599 original, was a dream come true for an American actor named Sam Wanamaker. On a trip to London in 1949, he was disappointed when he couldn’t trace the theatre. The only evidence that it once existed was a blackened bronze plaque on the wall of a brewery. That’s when Wanamaker vowed to build a fitting memorial to the Bard  ~ a replica of the Globe. Tragically, Wanamaker died in 1993, two years before his dream was realised.

The actors and the audience

The original Globe stood in the bustling commercial suburb of Southwark, on the south bank of Thames. When Shakespeare arrived in London from Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1580s, animal baiting was the most popular form of entertainment, evident in the thriving bull and bear rings. After the first Globe burnt to the ground in 1613 A.D., when a piece of wadding fired from a stage cannon shot into the roof burning the theatre down, the second theatre was given a tiled roof, and leading players were offered shares in it. That’s how William Shakespeare became a one-eighth owner of the Globe.

What was his theatre like? In its Wanamaker avatar, inaugurated on February 3, 2000, it has twenty sides and a diameter of 100 feet. Looking across the river to St. Paul’s cathedral, its mortared yard has a second surface, a mixture of hazelnut shells, cinders, sand and silt, all freely available industrial waste in Elizabethan times. In the 1990s, after each timber was marked, jointed and shaped, the theatre was assembled bay by bay. Unlike the first Globe that could hold 3,000 spectators, today’s reincarnation holds half that number to conform to fire safety regulations.

The new Globe is the first building in London since 1666 A.D. to have thatched roofing, though its water reeds have been chemically treated to retard burning.

But let’s wander back to the play. As Cordelia was banished from his sight by the vain King Lear, as Goneril and Regan won his favours with sweet words only to reveal their true colours soon after, as life in all its fury strutted across the boards, it was impossible not to note of the all-oak stage.

As with the original, skilled painters laboured over it to splotch, stain, vein and burnish it until we look at an illusion of stone, marble and semi-precious gems.

Cushions for sale!

Watchers all, we strove to focus our attention on the stage. But that was hard to do with pillars that blocked our view, both between bays and on the stage. As we craned our necks to update ourselves on the outrages perpetrated on Lear loyalist Gloucester by his illegitimate son Edmund, our backs creaked with the strain.
That’s when an American woman in the row in front, who has been a volunteer steward at the Globe during an earlier season, offers us a tip: Why don’t you go down to the yard, where the groundlings used to be, and stretch your legs a little?

It helped to look up at the stage, at the larger-than-life actors who declaimed their lines with elan, and feel a few drops of rain patter on our heads. All around stood hundreds of people, most clad in cheap rainproof gear, on their feet for the duration of the show.

That’s when I realised that umbrellas are banned in the yard, and so are folding chairs or shooting sticks. Of course, today’s crowd of five-pound watchers included students and tourists. But it was easy to imagine the boisterous, red-faced stinkards of the bard’s time, who ate and drank their way through the performance, interrupted it at will, broke into brawls, and hissed or clapped at the action. Unlike today’s clean-scrubbed faces, the Elizabethan groundlings rarely washed either themselves or their clothes.

Looking up from the yard, we gasped at the heavens above the stage space, with its midnight blue ceiling divided into panels by gilded ribs, each decorated by stars, sun, moon and the circle of the zodiac.

An ornate gate with sculpted figures from Shakespeare's plays

 
Its cloud-covered trapdoor cloaks the opening through which gods and goddesses can enter the human plane. Mercury and Apollo, the gods of eloquence, stand at either end, while the bare-breasted muses of tragedy and comedy gaze down from the balcony. We realised that the yard gave us an entirely new perspective on theatre at the Globe.

Back home, reliving the Globe experience, recent scholarship shares an amazing discovery  ~ the stage of the first theatre faced 48 degrees east of north, so that it was in continual shadow around the year. Why? Perhaps it was to conserve the richly dyed fabrics of the actors costumes, says one theatre source.

No matter what the answer, today’s Globe is a fitting tribute to Shakespeare from our time.

Theatre: Naomi Ackerman ~ A word war against violence

Naomi Ackerman: `Art is a good way to social change.'

NAOMI Ackerman stands tall. Bright-eyed and alone on stage, she seems at once powerful and vulnerable. Both as an actress who transcends worlds beyond Israel, and as a woman whose heart embraces the family of mankind.

As U.S.-born, Tel Aviv-based Naomi unfolded her dramatic monologue on domestic violence — titled Flowers Aren't Enough — at the J.S.S. Auditorium on May 13 and the St. Joseph's Evening College auditorium the next day, she touched a universal chord across continents, generations, and cultures. With 600 shows in Israel, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., India, and other locations behind her, it unravels the dilemma of young Michal, an ex-officer in the Israeli Army, the daughter of a wealthy family, a well-schooled woman, who finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship.

The crescendo and diminuendo of Naomi's powerhouse performance of Michal's story found resonance in every home where hands have been raised in violence, where voices have grown shrill with abuse, where relationships withstand heavy artillery. Originally commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Welfare five years ago, based on encounters with the inmates of a women's shelter, the theatrical piece researched, scripted and performed by Naomi, has the impact of a blow to the solar plexus.

Naomi, a graduate of the Nissan Native Acting Studio, encompasses dimensions beyond the stage, beyond musicals, films, and television. For, she is a trained clown, street performer, and stilt-walker. And a mediator and conflict resolution specialist, who has held workshops for the Peres Centre for Peace.

"I believe strongly that art is a good way to social change," confesses Naomi. "I feel I've brought about more change with socially-charged productions than through the rallies I marched in when I was younger." 

Laughing, she adds: "In my frustrated days at not winning an Oscar or not living in Hollywood, I try to remember that what I do is what I believe in."

On earlier trips to India, Naomi attended the Mumbai International Film Festival with a documentary film about the Arab-Jewish group of actors she performed with. In January 2003, she performed for sex workers in Mumbai and a rural women's human rights group in Pune, an experience that made her weep. On her recent three-week tour through Baroda, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Pondicherry, and Bangalore, sponsored by the Consulate-General of Israel in Mumbai and Chennai's Prakriti Foundation, her audience included hundreds of women sub-inspectors and garment factory workers in Chennai, women's groups and NGOs in Bangalore, besides theatre buffs.

Every hour-long show of Flowers Aren't Enough extends into a live exchange with the audience. In Chennai, a well-heeled woman spoke of her lawyer husband who tried to poison her while he plied her with diamonds and expensive cars, until she opted out to set up support centres for abused women. In a village outside Auroville, a woman wanted to tell her husband to stop beating her. Though empowered by the Women's Federation for Human Rights, she was scared. So, four of her women friends stood behind her as she spoke her mind. And he listened.

"That's so inspiring!" comments Naomi during an interview at The Park hotel in Bangalore, interlaced with both laughter and tears. "I would consider her one of my role models. More than any big writer or actress. Talking about women's issues in this village gave me a warm sensation of sisterhood. Perhaps it's also the fact that I'm pregnant. Everything is against them, yet somehow they're positive and happy. I'd like to incorporate some of their simplicity into my life. That encounter moved me to my core."

Excerpts from the conversation with Naomi Ackerman:

Do you still see your monologue as a work in progress because of the later exchanges?

Originally, the show was just 20 minutes long. For the first 50 shows, I was stretching it to make it deeper and wider. Often, someone sheds light on a dark area. I have the freedom to change it as I perform because I wrote it. I'm not less open now, but less quick to incorporate material into the show.

Did your work as a mediator help?

Being a mediator means basically you learn to listen. That enabled me to talk to these women in the shelter without judgment. I thought this could never happen to me. The biggest lesson was seeing myself in them.

Initially, I performed in all the Israeli jails. The men told me about their lives, their pressures. It made me realize that criticism about gender should be on both sides. Even men imbibe subtle messages about being strong and being providers, about making money. It's a societal issue.

How has the current tour impacted your life?

Outside Pondicherry, another woman explained to me that married women weren't supposed to dance. But she wanted to perform for International Womens' Day. So, a band of women said to her husband: "She is radiant when she dances. You should see her." He cried when he did. Then, he shopped for her costume. Their path to change is inspiring. It's without anger, without burning brassieres. They don't talk about divorce or the burdens of their lives. That's a path I would like to learn to walk down.

Any other cherished memories from interactions?

There was a sweet-faced Israeli woman who said to me: "You know, Naomi. That was me. I was the woman in your play. But I have to tell you my husband died five years ago of a heart attack, and I'm still afraid of him." To me, that's the essence of the cycle of violence.

Could you share a little about your workshops with children at risk?

I recently did a play in Israel with a group of Ethiopian Jewish girls, who suffer terrible racism mainly because of their dark skin. Those who come from broken homes are at risk to prostitution or drugs. 

Through theatre games, we created a safe environment where they could talk about school, their mothers, their pressures. We evolved a play about an Ethiopian-Israeli woman who's about to get an Oscar in Hollywood. She comes back to Israel to be interviewed by a local TV channel. Each question leads to a flashback in her life. Or rather, our lives.

Later, one of the girls said to me, "Naomi, if I can do this, I can do anything." Being on stage gives you so much self-confidence.

How did you experience Palestine as a woman?

I feel, especially with my Palestinian women friends, that if women were running this world, we would have had peace a long time ago. We don't agree about everything. But we try to share what is the same between us. We always say it's the women who'll bring about change because we're teaching the children. I don't want my children and my friend's children on the Palestinian side growing up into war or oppression or fear. 

(The Hindu Metroplus, Bangalore, 2003)

Theatre: Ranga Shankara ~ Dream of a theatre

Arundhati Nag: she brought her dream to life

THERE's a hush in the auditorium. A theatre buff shivers with anticipation. His neighbour settles into her amply cushioned seat, and then examines the coir matting under her toes, and the overhead ventilator pipes, the thrust stage for superior audience-actor interaction. They soon study the minimal settings, made of bamboo and board. 

Four musicians take their places onstage. Two actors enter, holding a banner with a picture of a golden deer on it. The stage is set. The play begins.

Can this Ramayana-based, Kudiyattam-adapted performance of "Maya Sita Prasanga" by Mysore's lauded Rangayana repertory company set the right mood for the opening of `Ranga Shankara', Bangalore's first state-of-the-art dedicated theatre? Will its exploration of illusion and reality prove potent? What will this new 300-seat theatre at J.P. Nagar mean to the city's cultural life? These questions buzz silently around the hall with its perfect acoustics, its latecomers' gallery, its brilliant lighting system, its revolving stage with a trapdoor for experiments as the invisible curtain went up on a 35-day theatre festival from October 28 to December 1, 2004. 

The event marks the culmination of a dream. The realisation of a four-year-long search for funds, for materials, for enthusiasts to build a 12,500 sq. ft., three-storey theatre complex. At the heart of this unusual theatre, built at a cost of Rs. 4 crore by the Sanket Trust chaired by Jnanpith awardee Girish Karnad, lies the story of an indomitable spirit named Arundhati Nag. Even the other trustees — including Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT) founder-member Vijay Padaki, National School of Drama graduate S. Surendranath, and theatre enthusiast S. Parameshwarappa — concede that. Similar accolades come from the project's consultant, president of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) M.S. Sathyu. 

Twenty-five years ago, when this multilingual stage and screen actress relocated to Bangalore from Mumbai after marrying Kannada thespian Shankar Nag, she carried within her a deep longing. To build a space with a voice similar to Mumbai's popular Prithvi Theatre in Karnataka's capital. As her dream found resonance in like-minded individuals, their first wish was granted with the laying of a foundation stone at a government-donated site on November 9, 2000, by former Chief Minister S.M. Krishna and an initial corpus of Rs. 20 lakhs. 

Since then, Arundhati's inner fire has melded together a crew of theatre buffs. A software specialist put her job on hold to assist with the nitty-gritty of `Ranga Shankara'. A journalist chose to coordinate the festival's variegated seminars and allied screenings. Mumbai's Atul Kumar, who directed "The Blue Mug", volunteered to work at the theatre till February 2005. Granite for the flooring and the dramatic staircase were donated by a quarry, while another concern cut it for free. Manufacturers of sanitary ware and bathroom fittings donated their mite. A woman labourer from rural Karnataka gave Arundhati Rs. 5, while industries like Mysore Sales International Limited (MSIL), Biocon, L&T, Himatsingka Seide Ltd., and Volkart contributed to the corpus. Oddly enough, not a single IT major chose to be part of the big picture.

Looking back, Arundhati recalls her experiences leading up to October 28: "All of Bangalore knew I was building this theatre. There's was only one song I'd been singing for four years. For someone who was doing 42 shows a month 25 years ago, that's been the journey. But it's been worth it."

 

Worth it? Of course. Because this intimate theatre is dedicated to the late visionary Shankar Nag. (Its name stems from ranga, which is Sanskrit for theatre, and the art's presiding deity, Shankara). Because the theatre has a unique computer-based script, sound, costume bank and video archive to enrich research. Because its inaugural festival celebrates Indian legends like Habib Tanvir from Chattisgarh and Ratan Thiyam from Manipur, while initiating an exchange with the inspiring Prithvi Theatre annual festival. (As part of this, Tanvir's Naya Theatre presents "Agra Bazar" and "Charan Das Chor", followed by Ajoka's "Aik Thi Nani" (with Zohra Sehgal and Uzra Butt), and Italy's Luoghi Delle Arte in "Commedia Delle Arte Galore". 

"Let `Ranga Shankara' speak for itself," declares Arundhati. "We know we want to showcase theatre, maybe music and dance once a year. We are committed to staging 300 shows every year. Today, theatre seems to have lost the capacity to address issues close to the hearts of the people, such as the environment or human rights. I hope Ranga Shankara will become a nerve centre to address community issues."

She stresses, "This theatre will strive to bring Karnataka to the centre-stage of world theatre, as well as bring world-class theatre to the common man in Karnataka." By her side, Sanjana Kapoor of Prithvi seconds every word. Towards this end, assisted by a generous subsidy from a major cell phone operator, ticket rates have been kept at a uniform, class-free Rs. 49, while the theatre facilities can be hired at approximately Rs. 5,000 per day, including lights and sophisticated equipment.

The hope is that `Ranga Shankara' will become a nerve centre to address community issues.

As crowds gather to watch a platform performance based on the recent incidents in Manipur in the ground floor foyer, as a prelude to the Rangayana show, theatre is being discussed threadbare in the candlelit café. Other buffs browse through cultural fare at the in-house bookstore. To every participant, it's heady to breathe deeply of the theatre of life.

What does it all portend? Sathyu, a celebrated theatre veteran, says, "It's the only theatre built entirely by theatre people. It's the best in India today, completely responsive to our needs."

Padaki, who's responsible for creating a new generation of enthusiasts with his annual summer workshops, adds, "Only through collaboration can theatre touch the community. We'd be keen to build `Ranga Shankara' into a viable institution."

 

`Ranga Shankara's' future plans include initiating German GRIPS-style theatre workshops for over 20,000 city students between ages seven and 12 round the year. And bridging the divide between Kannada theatre at H.N. Kalakshetra and English plays at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, and luring talented actors back from TV and films. "Theatre people now have no excuse. They have to win the audiences back," smiles Arundhati. 

Arundhati recalls that Shankar Nag saw theatre as "a unifying language, a forum for creating sensitive experiences". Within the `Ranga Shankara' vision, there is no place for parochialism, class or linguistic politics. Now that `Ranga Shankara' is dramatically real in brick-and-concrete, how does the dynamic woman at its very heart feel?

"I can't believe this is true," Arundhati whispers. "I feel I'm living a dream." But, of course, it took blood, sweat and tears to create this dream of a theatre. 

Is this the cue for a pan-Indian theatre renaissance? 

(Originally in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 2004)