If you have seen the Merchant Ivory production Shakespeare Wallah (1965), a meta film on the British actor-manager family of Kendels who toured post-colonial India and took the plays of Shakespeare to schools, you could easily relate to the passion of B.N. Balajee. The retired English professor from Mysuru is now touring the State with an exhibition of the bard’s memorabilia.
What is Shakespeare to us but for the vibrant theatre productions that his 37 plays have inspired worldwide? Prof. Balajee’s exhibition begins with video footage from the fascinating theatre production of Antony and Cleopatra , with Marlon Brando playing Mark Antony and Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra. He also has collection of LP records of rare theatre productions, which are over a hundred years old.
“A British English phonetic student myself, I learnt how to speak the language correctly through Shakespeare. Shakespeare needs to be declaimed to bring alive all the music of the language,” said Prof. Balajee, launching into an extempore speech by Mark Antony with all the intonations and stress of a theatre production.
Prof. Balajee, who has organised more than 30 exhibitions, mostly in schools and colleges, has prepared a series of over 100 charts, with photographs and publicity posters of all the 37 plays, notable quotes and brief plot summaries. “The series is a good entry point for many students into the world of Shakespeare,” he said.
One of his prized photographs is that of Edwin Booth, an American actor, performing a play by Shakespeare. Booth was also the man who, later in his life, assassinated the then American president Abraham Lincoln.
The exhibition also has over 70 publicity posters and brochures of various theatre productions, collected over the years from Globe Theatre and many leading theatres in New York. It also has more than 100 books on Shakespeare, including many Kannada translations of his works.
Shakespeare for scientistsProf. Balajee has now embarked on a series of exhibitions and lectures on Shakespeare aimed at scientists and engineers.
The first such programme was held in New Delhi this February. It was organised by the Defence Infrastructure Planning and Management Council of India for an audience of around 500 defence scientists. “Many middle-aged scientists came forward and said their children were now reading these classics,” Prof. Balajee said. He also recently held a similar exhibition-cum-interaction at Bharath Electronics Ltd. in the city.
“There is a need to take humanities education to scientists and science education to those in the humanities field. Shakespeare is a good entry point into English classics. [His works] also impart morals without being explicit,” he said.
Collection that started from a giftThe large collection of memorabilia that Prof. Balajee has accumulated started with a postcard from Stratford-upon-Avon, gifted to him by theatre artiste Lakshmi Chandrashekhar in the early 1980s.
“The two-pound postcard has a photo of Shakespeare and a famous quote by the bard,” Prof. Balajee said. He added that most of the items he has today were collected during his trips to England and the United States in 2007 and 2008.
“The first time I went to Stratford-upon-Avon, I was so emotional that I took the soil of the town and put it on my head,” recounted Prof. Balajee.
