When Mahesh Dattani watched a play for the first time as a child, he remembers wanting to be an actor. “Performance is the centre of theatre, and as a child, that’s what lures you,” says the celebrated director and the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award in 1998. So what stopped him from pursuing the spotlight? “People. They didn’t think I was a very good actor and were probably right. I was quite lousy when I took the stage in my late teens,” laughs Dattani.
Instead, he decided to direct. When he was 20, his directorial debut, Woody Allen’s God , involved a cast of 22. A bit ambitious? “I think more foolish than anything else,” he laughs. “It worked not because I did a good job, but because every cast member brought friends.” But then, when he started drawing audiences due to his own merit while directing the works of Neil Simon and Jean-Paul Sartre, he just wasn’t happy. “I couldn’t relate to these plays. Back then, we didn’t have the idea of original writing, and that’s why I got into it.” So, in 1986, 28-year-old Dattani wrote, directed and acted in his first original, Where There’s a Will .
This time, it worked, not because of a large cast, but because the audience could relate to the characters on stage. But theatre was not yet his full-time pursuit: after a brief stint in advertising, Dattani had joined his father’s printing and packaging machinery business as a 22-year-old. “This worked wonderfully, because during the day, I would go to client meetings, and in the afternoons, I would plan my productions. My father was alright with it because he saw theatre as a hobby; 30 years ago, it was considered just an amateur activity.” Dance Like a Man , Tara , Bravely Fought the Queen and On a Muggy Night in Mumbai followed over the next decade. People noticed his work, and that, he says, “was a revelation. I never took myself seriously as a writer.”
Dattani’s plays, that dealt with burning urban issues, including child abuse, social stereotyping, sexual identity, religious intolerance and gender inequality, soon created a stir in the world of theatre. “I don’t see them as issues, but as the social fabric of urban life. I’m urban, and though my plays are not autobiographical, who I am and what I write are connected.” As appreciation started pouring in, the push to take the plunge as a full-time theatre artiste came when Alyque Padamsee told him that he had to become a professional writer. “I asked him, what is that? How can I make a living out of it?”
Over 20 years later, he is one of the select niche who have. He conducted theatre workshops when no one else was doing so. He took over school plays at a time when only teachers directed them. He wrote radio plays for BBC, and even made movies. “Film direction happened by chance. On a Muggy Night in Mumbai was made a movie, Mango Souffle , for 20 lakhs. I swore then that I would never make a film again, because it was such a technical medium. But when I saw the final product, I felt I could do better.” So, he followed it up with Morning Raga, Dance Like a Man and Ek Alag Mausam . “Doors kept opening up. The plays I wrote travelled abroad even before I did. If you are a director or actor, you are bound by the logistics of having to be physically present. That way, the playwright is the most dispensable; besides, if I tried to go wherever my plays went, I’d go crazy.”
But when he does travel, he likes to have a packed schedule and an authentic taste of the place he goes to. Recently in the city for a day to be part of the discussion following Kalki Koechlin’s soliloquy Soul Of A Woman , Dattani says he would love some authentic South Indian fare. Instead, he makes do with some quick imitation Chettinad cuisine for lunch, before heading to meet the crew from Crea-Shakthi for the first reading of his latest work, Snapshots of a Fervid Sunrise . “This is the most exciting thing I’m working on now and I’m glad to be doing it with a nascent crowd that is passionate about theatre in this city.” The play is the story of two fallen heroes from our country’s past, and questions who our heroes are and how they are celebrated.
Which makes one wonder, now, what with our social fabric evolving, has his content changed? “Yes and no. When, in 1998, I wrote On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, it was about the less-talked-about gay sub-culture. Now, there is access to media and information, and even actors have come out in support of this cause. But, these are not resolved issues. So maybe, I won’t write about rape now, but rather, how a neighbour deals with it.” Life, after all, is complex, he says, and it is important to look beyond the surface and bring out the different aspects of this complexity.
