From a young boy who did mimicry on stage in Hubballi to a showman commanding a presence of a thousand people at each of his plays worldwide, Yashavant Sirdeshpande’s story is the stuff of cinema. And if the story itself is replete with riveting anecdotes, 52-year-old Sirdeshpande, as its narrator, is nothing less than spellbinding. After all, it is not without reason that he is popularly called ‘Nageya Sardar’ or ‘Nage Natakagala Badshah’.
A conversation with Sirdeshpande makes you think whether the allure of a story lies in the text or in the manner in which it is narrated. What happens when it is hard to separate the two? As Sirdeshpande began to tell his own story, I began to think that a fascinating narrator always has a fascinating story to tell.
“My school teacher would come home and tell my parents that it has been a week since I attended school. And that would be true, for I would be touring Dharwad and Bangalore to watch films. I was 12 and had to see the first day first show no matter what,” says Sirdeshpande with a chuckle.
“Well, red buses were a craze back then and I’d become friends with the driver and the conductor. I used to sell my books and possessions for the money for the tickets. So, for Rs.20, the driver has to pick me up from Hubballi and take me to Bangalore. There, I’d watch the first show of Rajkumar’s latest film, eat where the driver eats, take a bath in his rest house and then sleep in the same bus at night. I would have left home a week ago with a tiffin box in hand. We were four siblings and my dad was out on work for most of the week. My mother couldn’t keep track of where we children went all the time..,” he explains with a candour that is quickly followed by his trademark guffaw.
So, as a child, Sirdeshpande says he must have seen around 300 films. School was just a pit stop, the real dreams were nurtured elsewhere. “There were three major drama companies back then and each of their plays would be five-hour long ones.These were really popular in North Karnataka. They were devised as entertainment for those who missed their last bus. The audiences were each offered a chaape seat on which it was easy to eat and then sleep. I’d watch these plays with avid interest. They were social plays and stories of reformers and saints...”
And it was thus not long before Sirdeshpande crossed over from the audience to the stage to become a performer himself. “The stage wasn’t alien to me anyway. Right from when I was three or four, I had acted in small plays. My maushi was a music teacher who would encourage me to perform. And later, as a child of 12 and 15, I’d perform wherever there was an opportunity. I knew Charlie Chaplin through cinema and would imitate him. These would be 40-45 minute long shows in small villages. The audience had never heard of Chaplin but soon they began saying ‘hey, this guy does not talk but he still manages to depict fascinating things..’Gradually, I began telling them who Chaplin was, that he was an important figure, that he talked about hunger and so on...”
A theatre workshop organised by Jayateertha Joshi finally gave a formal introduction to theatre to Sirdeshpande. “I was like Joshi’s tail. I’d follow him everywhere and work on everything from set design to poster painting.”
Then in 1985, Sirdeshpande applied and got into Ninasam. He went with the dream of becoming an actor but graduated and chose direction. After Ninasam, Sirdeshpande founded Rangavartula, a group comprising 17 theatre enthusiasts. For every director in that group, 16 others were the actors. “Each one got three weeks to stage their play. I also created what I call ‘Rangavartula audience team’. Each one of us had to bring ten people to this audience team and thus a theatre audience was born. The money that this audience paid, albeit they were our friends and family, formed the capital for our future productions.”
It was at this point that he got a call from Ninasam again, this time for Tirugaata. “We did many plays-- King Lear , Chidambara Rahasya , Chanakya Prapancha , etc. I must have played 11 roles. Incidentally, I was termed a bad actor from Ninasam. According to them, my strength was in stage craft. I got more marks for that than for acting.”
Sirdeshpande’s life took him to South Central Cultural Zone and to Nagpur. Here, he interacted with theatre practitioners from across the country and was programme officer for landmark events of the then government. He was also in-charge of theatre for four states from the SCCZ-- Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
But the real show began after all this. After ten years away from Karnataka, Sirdeshpande returned to what would actually be the blockbuster phase of his life. He staged one of his landmark plays-- ‘All the Best’, a Kannada adaptation of a Marathi play he had seen and bought the rights of. Then he staged ‘Rashi Chakra’, a one-man show, ‘Sahi re Sahi’, ‘Dil Maange More’, ‘Olave Jeevana Sakashatkara’. All these plays would go on to attract thousands of people and would each have thousand shows! “This was a phase in which I was hugely supported by Sadanand Maiya. He was in MTR at that time and was a busy man. I approached him to request him to organise food sampling at the end of each show. I don’t know what he saw in me but he invested his faith and money in my talent almost immediately.”
Under the banner of Guru Institute, Hubballi, Sirdeshpande and his troupe performed 100-120 shows a year across Karnataka. “The number of artists in my group at any time ranged from 1 to 17. All of them, I ensured, were paid for the work they put in. We even went abroad. It was indeed an incredible phase.”
It was this phase that earned him the titles of praise for his comic timing, acting and direction. “I think my strength was in ‘regionalising’ a play and improvising. Hasya or comedy is like all other emotions. A joke is funny not just because of what it says but because who says it and the way that person says it. And that can be learnt only by practise.”
The list of projects and initiatives that Sirdeshpande dabbled in is nearly endless. Not just in theatre, he has crafted a career in television as well as cinema, getting as much acclaim for them as well. And then he even created educational theatre projects such as Knodu Texts in which a play from their curriculum would be staged for college students etching it in their minds.
There are two principles Sirdeshpande says he swears by: first, all his plans would have to be long term and second, that his commitment has to be around 120 per cent for each project. Partly, these principles originated, he says, from what he saw on ground, when he stepped into theatre. “Theatre in Karnataka is not as vibrant as we have imagined to it to be. Let’s look at volume: how many shows does a popular theatre group in Bangalore do in a month? The second part of this problem is also that theatre in the State has the worst infrastructure. You may have the best lighting artists but what will you do in Bijapur where there may be no hall or light! A thriving theatre scene and good infrastructure sustain each other.”
After seeing such praise for his work up until now, what does he think of his career in theatre thus far? “I actually want to go back to K.V. Subbanna sir and ask him to look at me as an actor today and mark me on my performance again,” he says, his eyes bright with tears.
