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Photo: Sandeep Saxena

Life’s a stage Mahesh Dattani in New Delhi

Going down memory lane, Dattani spoke of how his ambitions were kindled by watching the popular comedies on Gujarati stage as a child in Bangalore. The loud and garish colours and the ambience of these plays and the foyer drama were the earliest hints of the power of theatre for the young Dattani. “It was like another world, another reality. I wanted to be an actor,” confessed the actor’s director about his initial foray into the world of theatre.

A traditional middle class English school education did equip him with the grip on the English language, but it also brought forth the inherent prejudices and hypocrisies in relation to English literature and theatre. “I was never taught Kambar or Vijay Tendulkar in my school. We only discussed Keats and Shakespeare. I was proud of my command over English. But the Shakespeare and Keats which we were taught were boring and thus the genius of Shakespeare escaped us,” commented the author of the widely acclaimed plays “Final Solutions” and “Tara”.

On the problems of creative writing in English, Dattani answered the queries with his choice of language, “Though I’ve always written in English, my plays are set in India and are about people like us, who read and speak English. I chose to write about the people whom I am familiar with.” Indeed, the millions of Indians who have been sensitised on social and political issues through his theatre couldn’t agree more.

“One of the plays which has influenced me a lot is Vijay Tendulkar’s ‘Silence! The Court is in Session’. The psychological and overt violence in his plays have moved me,” he said.

Dattani did feel that language in drama is the point of identity in a milieu. Recalling his experiences as a filmmaker of his own play, Dance like a Man and also Morning Raga and Mango Souffle, Dattani commented, “Your sense of storytelling comes through in a greater way with films. I feel that writing for theatre is more challenging. If you could write a play, you could write anything.”

Admitting that writing on themes which are less discussed in public hasn’t been easy, Dattani narrated his experience with the remarkable play on child sexual abuse, “Thirty Days in September”, “I had done research with a Delhi-based NGO on this topic. The testimonials were shocking. I decide that we need to give the audience not only what they want to see, but also what they ought to see.”

On the division between drama and theatre, he asserted, “I am not sure what purpose dramatic literature serves. I write my plays to be performed. I am conscious of drama being classified under literature.” However, he felt that “theatre is still thriving in some isolated pockets of India, and cites and offered Ninasam by Subanna as an instance. “What Subanna has done with Ninasam is a model for the whole country.”

Dattani signed off by answering in characteristic wit to an aspiring playwright’s query on tips for writing, “If you have conviction, imagination, then you have it in you. A play is constantly evolving unlike a novel.”

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