On December 25, at Prithvi Theatre, one would often chance upon a quiet and unostentatious commemorative event (some theatre, some songs, a few speeches) in the morning followed by the distribution of sooji ka halwa and cutting chai at the gathering area where audiences would jostle for space later in the day. For theatrewallahs, rather than the festivities of Christmas, the day marks the passing of theatre doyen Satyadev Dubey in 2011. This time, the event was organised privately elsewhere, given how the demise of Shashi Kapoor earlier in the month continues to cast a solemn pall over the otherwise business-as-usual mien of the space. Like Kapoor, whose prized seat at the edge of the aisles inside the auditorium was a symbol of the committed aficionado’s passion, Dubey’s benignly cantankerous presence in the café outside brought at least two generations of theatregoers into close proximity with temperamental genius.
While Dubey’s unassailable legacy has catapulted him into revered posterity, one also gets that sinking feeling at times of how even veritable giants of the arts can vanish almost without a trace. This because the work that they have accomplished lies in the realm of the ephemeral arts, which by its very nature resists the lure of permanent record. Perhaps this fate may elude the heavily digitised contemporary theatre of today. Ever the maverick, Dubey persists of course. The Scenes We Made , a book edited by Shanta Gokhale that came out in 2015, talks of the first few decades of experimental theatre in Mumbai, with Dubey cast in the mould of a fountainhead. Since 2011, actor and light designer Hidayat Sami has staged plays under the aegis of Theatre Unit, the theatre group founded by Ebrahim Alkazi that Dubey took over in the 1960s. And of, course the observances at Prithvi, both on his birth and death anniversaries, keeps a flame of remembrance alive.
Sometime last year, I chanced upon a working draft of what was perhaps Dubey’s last work as playwright and director, courtesy actor Kaustubh Kumar Kela, who was cast in the production’s ensemble, and had held on to the script for years. The play was intended as a workshop exercise in 2010 and never did see an actual staged performance. Titled Save Section 377 — the title is ironic — it was certainly one of the earliest forays into theatre by a batch of budding theatre actors, some of whom like Sukant Goel, Trimala Adhikari, Nishi Doshi and Kela, have all ended up with prolific résumés. The cherry on the cake was, of course, that they had all worked with Dubey, who had long been assigned the epithet of living legend.
As a found artefact, the script could well be termed a collector’s item that gives us a tantalising glimpse of theatrical ‘process’ and the intangibles that might be encountered in the arduous journey undertaken by a play from script to stage. The well-thumbed pages aside, almost every second line is scribbled over with new text, or emphases, or parentheses. Kela has, of course, highlighted his own portions with a yellow marker, and has interestingly even counted all his lines — in an ensemble, keeping a measure of such of thing assumes a significance of its own. Then there are lines and lines of fresh dialogue in his own handwriting that seem to miraculously find space for themselves in the paragraph breaks within the printed text. Although one might want to read the original text for itself, the embellishments — that in most probability have emerged from on-floor devising and the director’s own instructions — gives the document a unique character of its own.
As a ‘lost work’ that has now been found, Save Section 377 is a scathing critique of the Victorian morality that continues to grasp the country in its stranglehold, although one cannot fully apprehend how effective it may prove to be as a performed piece. Yet there is no denying its richness of texture and the compelling power of argument that the play plays with so wonderfully. Its focus is not just gay rights — which Section 377 has almost become synonymous with in recent years — but several other aspects of consensual adult behaviors that might find themselves under the ambit of draconian laws. Then there are those delicious references from theatre; Dubey fashions himself as the meta-playwright Dubenski, the tramp from Waiting from Godot makes an extended cameo, and the three symbols of morality form a Greek-style chorus. This is a piece that appears to be written for a young ensemble. Since very few youth theatre groups seem attuned to politically-inclined theatre these days, it is unlikely it would be easily picked up and staged even if the text were restored and made available to the public domain.
