There’s a dreamy, gossamer like quality to The Scenes We Made: An Oral History of Experimental Theatre in Mumbai, edited by Shanta Gokhale. But this is expected when the unforced, mildly, and sometimes, sharply divergent memories of 40 theatre practitioners are brought together in a book that constructs cultural history from a mass of personal testimonies. The 40 individuals who were interviewed include theatre directors, actors, playwrights, set designers and critics from the worlds of Hindi and Marathi — and occasionally Gujarati and English — theatres spanning the late 50s and early 90s.
The book documents scenes at every turn. We read about Satyadev Dubey berating a 23-year-old Girish Karnad for writing an English play. But, realising that Yayati was written in Kannanda, he listened to the play and instantly decided to direct it.
There are notes of dissent too, as playwright and critic GP Deshpande questions the very premise that the upsurge in theatre activity described in the book was indeed experimental theatre at all.
Girish Karnad and Shyam Benegal visited Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, Peddar Road (the city’s theatre hub from the late 1950s to the late 1960s) as young men and were impressed by the wealth of diverse artistic influences they encountered there. Karnad watched theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi’s interpretation of European classics like Miss Julie, Antigone and Eurydice picking up early ideas for his own reworking of myths in theatre. Benegal recalls attending a workshop by choreographer Martha Graham at the Bhulabhai Institute in 1956, as a college student.
Subsequently the creative energy of the movement shifted to Walchand Terraces at Tardeo from 1968 to 1972, and then later to Chhabildas Hall at Dadar from 1974 to 1992. The latter was an awkwardly shaped space where street sounds often intruded. But this was to become an important movement for experimental theatre for 18 years, with theatre group Awiskhar playing a seminal role in promoting new theatre people. From 1995 onwards, the action seems entirely centred around Prithvi Theatre in Juhu.
“ Vijaya Mehta, Shreeram Lagoo and most of Vijay Tendulkar’s plays were staged on the mainstream commercial stage . ” Shanta Gokhale - Writer, editor and critic
The idea for the book began when writer and critic Shanta Gokhale, an ardent advocate of documentation in the arts, was invited by Ashok Kulkarni of the Sahitya Rangbhoomi Pratishthan (a cultural trust which would go on to sponsor the book) to their annual theatre fellowships award function in Pune. On noticing young theatre people among her listeners, Gokhale proposed that there was an urgent need to document creative processes.
The idea created ripples and soon Kulkarni and theatre director Sunil Shanbag decided to pursue it. The idea of an oral history approach had already appealed to Gokhale, Shanbag and Kulkarni during initial meetings.
(Alaknanda Samarth and Ebrahim Alkazi in August Strindberg's Miss Julie, directed by Ebrahim Alkazi. Photo: Mitter Bedi)
Gokhale spoke to The Hindu about the book and how theatre in the city has evolved. Edited excerpts from the interview.
Your approach and method in your writing on theatre has always been closer to the oral history philosophy, which involves getting close to the subjects, celebrating and acknowledging the multiplicity of testimonies.
I would say the reason for that might be that at Bristol, where I did English literature, FR Leavis was very much the dominant influence. So I found a close reading of texts very exciting. I have carried that method to my perspectives on theatre. I don’t write academically because, when I talk about theatre, I’m talking to directors, theatre lovers, set designers, playwrights, actors. That’s my audience.
Satyadev Dubey is the key figure who runs through The Scenes We Made, a restless creative force influencing the way that experimental theatre evolved in Mumbai. What made him so distinctive?
Dubey lived through a time when the culture of the city was being formed, from the late 50s to the early 90s. Where was theatre in Mumbai at the time he started doing plays? Where was the modern viewpoint that came with his first big original play, Andha Yug, which showed war not as a brave and noble thing but an engagement that destroyed both sides. The play was not external to Dubey. He lived by myth and theatre was his way to grow into modernity.
What does the book set out to do?
What we aimed at was documenting, through people’s memories, what was happening in theatre in Mumbai from the 60s to the 90s. To give concreteness to the story, we decided to track it through three spaces, the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute, Walchand Terrace and Chhabildas Hall, which had lent themselves to new work. We could have looked at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh, which had active theatre programmes going; but these three spaces we chose flowed into each other through Dubey, who was dynamically present in all three.
Was it also a certain kind of theatre that was favoured?
There were different kinds of theatre within the experimental space. Vijaya Mehta did new original plays by Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Elkunchwar, and translations of plays like Ionesco’s The Chairs and Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Theatre Group was doing European classics. At Walchand Terrace, Dubey did a play of a kind he had not done before. Anushthan was physical theatre while all other plays directed by Dubey were dominated by the word. While Dubey was himself fascinated by the word, he was open to and admired a lot of non-verbal theatre, particularly by younger directors.
Forty theatre people were interviewed by ten interviewers and each person has a distinctive voice. How was this achieved?
The interviewees are all talking about their own work and memories and the language is theirs. They were happy to remember their past work because there was no pressure on them to remember accurately. And I was happy to let their voices come through to readers with minimum editorial interference because they were so articulate and insightful. For me as editor the personal voice is extremely important.
(Alaknanda Samarth and Satyadev Dubey in "Band Darwaze.")
How did the press and the government view experimental theatre during that time?
The press was very supportive of the new then because it was not market driven as it is today. Today an experimental play will not get the kind of space that Dubey got. Many journalists were writing about theatre. How many journalists do that today? Theatre was culturally important. The press was also supportive of Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani who were making avant garde films. Fortunately for this generation there is social media, a freer space.
How does the book allude to mainstream theatre in the city during that period?
There is an interesting dual view of the mainstream in Marathi experimental theatre. Dilip Kolhatkar says in his interview that you have to finally go to the mainstream if you want to be tested as a theatre director. Prashant Dalvi and Chandrakant Kulkarni say that their experimental work gave them the foundation for their work on the mainstream.
In 1992, Prashant wrote Chaarchaugi, a play that subverted all middle class holy cows. Its protagonist was a woman who had three daughters from her relationship with a married man. The play was a success which says something about the Marathi mainstream theatre and also its audience.
There has always been a tense connection between the mainstream and experimental theatre. Vijaya Mehta, Shreeram Lagoo and most of Vijay Tendulkar’s plays were staged on the mainstream commercial stage.
A quest for space |
A constant struggle for space both of the physical and metaphorical kind, has been a grim fact of life for Mumbai’s theatre community. Director Sunil Shanbag has been a part of Mumbai’s theatre world for the last four decades. A critical partner in the project, Shanbag began his career with Satyadev Dubey’s Theatre Unit in the early 70s as an actor. Witness to the development of the experimental theatre movement during the Chhabildas Hall years, Shanbag, like other practitioners moved on to direct plays with his own company Arpana (1985). From the mid 90s he had shifted his theatre practice like many others, to the only welcoming theatre space, Prithvi Theatre in Juhu, proving that the centre of theatre had moved from south to north as the city expanded.
Shanbag became interested in the book project motivated by a commitment to documenting theatre. “These stories are all part of our tradition,” he says, “The strategies, of doing theatre in service of an idea is something that theatre people should know.”
His own background as an award winning documentary filmmaker helped, as each interview was also filmed. Talks are now on with Sahapedia, the cultural portal, to upload these. It is the oral history form that fascinates him. “The fun is in the meandering. Listening to raw voices not yet constructed is fascinating”, he says. But although the passion and grit shown by the experimental theatre groups of the past is inspiring, Shanbag warns against treating it like a golden period. “Doing experimental theatre is no less arduous or heroic today. Earlier, you didn’t load theatre with livelihood and most people had day jobs. Today for 80 per cent of actors it is all they do.”
In the past, giving it all meant that all Sundays and vacations were set aside for theatre. All along, there have been examples of benign indifference as well as outright betrayals. “In Mumbai where so much theatre happens and where a tradition exists, we have not been able to build a single small permanent space designed for theatre after Prithvi Theatre.” The quest for space has led Shanbag to create Tamasha Theatre 18 months ago, with younger actors taking theatre to art galleries, libraries and even pubs. The quest for space has become in this case a new kind of theatre.
Devina Dutt is an arts writer and the founder of First Edition Arts.
