A decade of theatre
-Mohammed Ali Baig, Founder, Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation
In January 2015 on my birthday last year, my wife Noor presented me the first draft of the play adapted from her own short story ’Spaces’ a best seller. Little did we know that the play would be invited for international premieres overseas and to the most prestigious theatre fests across India. It has also been a memorable year for many reasons; two international premieres in Istanbul and London, three Retrospectives of my plays across continents, four countries inviting ‘Quli:Dilon ka Shahzaada’, ‘Savaan-e-Hayat and ‘Spaces’ in one year and the latter receiving standing ovations in five cities. This year also marked 10 years of the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation’s theatre revival movement for which the Indian Government released a Special Postal Cover. The tenth Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival saw an expansive line-up of the who’s who of theatre in 2015 like in previous years. Full house openings of the Foundation’s plays at NCPA, Mumbai, Delhi’s Habitat Centre Theatre Fests and Rangashankara in Bangalore too reaffirmed my belief in my own idiom of theatre that comes out of two generations of riyaaz
From Broadway to broader windows
- Seema Azharuddin, Producer, actor, Kartaal Productions
My share of bouquets and brickbats came in 2010 with my first production and a favourite of mine ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. I had no money to present it physically that way and the challenges were becoming enormous. Even if I had the money, where could I find a director and the actors, the easiest was the props and the art for the stage set-up, but no money to build. I then had to create a ‘begging bowl’ culture attached to which was the “thinking out of the bowl” constantly, one of which was to invite cine stars to perform and gather an audience. The need to educate and inform both my government and private partners to the rising need for feeding the soul and the intellect became a necessity added to which was the need to club it with a charity of sort. This journey carrying these elements saw six productions going forth namely, ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, ‘Ammulu’ (a docu-drama in Telugu), ‘April Fool’ ( a Telugu film), ‘An Evening with Shakespeare’, ’JFK Eulogy’ and the latest in 2015, on Kartaal Productions’ 5th anniversary and the first of our new State, ‘Cine Bhasmasura’ ( a laugh-a-minute comedy engaging many cine stars). Theatre is, indeed, a journey with all of life’s teachings, a platform with no barriers, to expression, but a lot of challenges. The challenge of any commercial theatre production will give you sleepless nights but lead to a sleep so content, you just want to keep on performing!
A year of learning
-Vinay Varma, Director, Sutradhar
2015 was a great year for Sutradhar. Three new productions ‘Bitter Chocolate’ (both English and Hindi versions), ‘Out At Sea’ and ‘Agnes of God’ in addition to repeat shows of our popular Hyderabadi comedy ‘Biryani Aur Haleem’, ‘Siyaah Haashiye’ and Ismat Chughtai’s three short stories, ‘Ismat-Ek Aurat’. I was invited to perform at three festivals – at Indore, at the National Drama Festival, Bhopal; and the Kul Hind Urdu Drama Festival, Solapur. I had the opportunity to cast and direct some new and old faces – Ramakrishna Shenoy of Dramanon and Mila Deb, Madhuri Dempsey, Parveen Bastawala, Raji Nair, Ganesh Nallari. However, ‘Agnes of God’ will be the most cherished one for the challenge it threw up in terms of content and casting. With support from many quarters and police protection amid protests, I was amazed by the focus of all my three female actors who never got distracted; they went ahead with the performance as if nothing was happening around. Also the entire city, the artiste community stood solidly behind us. Meanwhile, if Hyderabad theatre has to grow, actors and directors must learn to listen to the harsh voices. We are still handicapped by good performing spaces. Having said that, theatre is a live medium and cannot have a reach beyond a particular range. We must learn to live with the limitations that the medium offers and work around it.
A share of ups and downs
-Rammohan Holagundi , Director, Nishumbita
2015 marking my 26th year into theatre, had me facing an equal share of ups and downs at Nishumbita. Starting the year with ‘Hamlet’ and later, honouring Indian playwrights like Girish Karnad through the theatre festival Natatotsav (an idea of my better half Sowmya), were tasks that did us a world of good. Getting the auditorium was a big deal and overcoming the frequent change of venues and other practical shortcomings, sometimes even lacking support, we were quite happy to see it happen. We’ll be the first group from Telangana to stage a Telugu play ‘Agnivarsham’ (written by Girish Karnad) at the NSD Festival, Delhi and Jammu in February 2016. We are thus doing our best to give a new dimension to Telugu theatre. On another note, it was a great sight to see a theatre crowd come together when Lamakaan was issued a notice to be shut. Saying that, we really need to have good auditorium spaces, an example could be the open area at the Prakash Nagar airport that’s only restricted to politicians. With the year having just begun, we, art-lovers should stay together and look for opportunities to learn more.
