Hilda David

Emerging Trends in Indian English Drama                                                                          

More than 150 years ago, K Khusro Kabrazi, who founded the Parsee Nataka Mandali in 1853, presented Rustom and Sohrab in Grant Road on 29th October 1853, which is the unofficial theatre day for Indian English plays.
In those days, the play opened with a loud bang of exploding potash, whilst the curtain was being raised. And even as the audience went silent and attentive, occasional shouts from the vendors around the theatre percolated the auditorium. "Pista-Badam - Chopdi - Punkha - Uthav Jaldi and the incessant extolling of the ticket-seller "Khel Abhi Chalu Hua."

The Bombay Times, April 2, 1852 reported, "For a bottle of soda water, and a small bun, a rupee is too great a charge" And though smoking was prohibited, the rule was not enforced, since the odour of Manila was "less obnoxious than the town drain." Performances kicked-off at a little after eight, and terminated a little after midnight. The pit was always the scene of noisy chatter and loud interruption. Drunken sailors used to come and insult the ladies in the audience or the actors."

Those were the days ...

The tradition of performing plays continued in Mumbai (Bombay, in those days). For most parts, when in doubt, groups performed Shakespeare. The Marathi theatre wallah, for instance, has translated all the Bard's plays to Marathi. Later, I learnt, Ayyappa Panicker and KavalamNarayana Panicker have translated into Malayalam, 27 plays of Shakespeare. And so on.

Mumbai hosted extravagant productions by the touring companies. The Bard and his Word, percolated to the boards of Mumbai - and even Pune. In a book called Marathi Rangabhoomi by Vinayak Kulkarni, published in 1903, speaks of Ms Elisa May and Ms Chloe Player went to Deccan College (Pune) and read out plays in English for Rs 500!!! Then, in 1872, the students of Vishrambaug High School, staged JULIUS CAESAR in their school courtyard. Later, pupils of Baba Gokhale School staged The Merchant of Venice. Also, students of Rajaram College performed Marathi versions of Romeo & Juliet and Merchant of Venice. This was on the prodding of their Principal, Prof Candy who awarded a prize of Rs 150, which is a lot of money for poor students.

The thing is, competitions, ever since, have been the mainstay of Indian English playwriting. Be it: the BBC Radio Playwriting Award, or the Sultan Padamsee Award, and so on. These competitions threw up, quite a few reputed Indian English playwrights, Manjula Padmanabhan for one. Her play Harvest was selected as the Best Play for the Onassis Award from 14,000 entries.

In 1992, The Hindu had organised an All India Playwriting Competition which had 150 entries and six winners. A few years ago, there was the Rage + British Council Playwriting Workshop which threw up a festival of plays. Again there were lots of playwrights.

Araghya Lahiri who was part of the theatre movement with Rage and Thespo pointed out: "There has been an explosion in terms of interest in theatre. It has resulted in an unprecedented volume and range of work. I think these two are very important and heartening things. Earlier on, there were people interested in theatre but it was just a phase in college after which they had to get a job. Right now, it is being taken a lot more seriously. Somewhere the practicality is converging with interest, which can only be a good thing."

Lahiri should know, he directed, Crab, a play by first-time Bengaluru based playwright, Ram Ganesh Kamatham.

The point is, just one out of the 25 plays had any merit. Playwriting is a tough, thankless job. It cannot be done callously, or with disrespect.
The late Pearl Padamsee, had pertinent observations about Indian English theatre which she aired in a rare interview a few days before she passed away. She said: "The Greek theatre has tackled vexed issues. Our Indian English theatre has not. There can be number of reasons. A lot of theatre that we see today is frivolous. But the moot point is, how many of us want it not to be so. Would we like to be provoked into thinking? Would we, at all, like to face the truth? But these are lessons no one wants to hear. Today's trends and attitudes worry me. We seem to have transformed into a community that gets excited about a new department store merely because it possesses or does not possess a parking lot. The highpoint of our lives seem to be music shops that serve coffee and cakes. This does not augur well for our society, and for theatre."

In 1997, there was an event which "augured" well for Indian English theatre. This was when Sanjna Kapoor and Prithvi Theatre - organised a three-day play-reading festival in March, 1997. It was enigmatically christened "And then there is English Theatre". According to the organisers, this was simply because of the peculiar status - the English Theatre - occupies on the national agenda. Consider the facts: Everybody belittles it (especially, its upper-class snobbery). Nobody takes it seriously (since its rarely relevant).  And yet - the wretched thing exists.

But let that be.

On those three days in March - 4 full-length - and 4-one-acts play written by Indian English Playwrights were read out. These plays ranged from the Plays on the Raj Period on Day-1. The Youth Plays on Day-2; and the Post-Independence Plays on Day-3. In addition, a couple of academic-papers on the 'theme of the day' were read-out.

But - the whole point was, would this veritable deluge of Indian English Playwrights (poor cousins to the Indian English Novelists) attract the mobs. That too at: 9.00. a.m. Fortunately, since the fifties, theatre-wallahs have been conditioned to wait for Godot, and that has taught us patience. It also taught us, whilst the audience arrived (which they did - quite surprisingly!) what Gramsci echoed in 1921 "that a lot still remains to be done."

In real terms - those three days were quite successful. For one, it reviewed 25 years of Indian English Theatre. Further, it evoked, a goodish response from the English Theatre-Groups in Mumbai.

Rahul da Cunha was there. His play-reading of Gurcharan Das' Larins Sahib was spot-on (perhaps better than the production!!!). Rooky Dadachanji did a moving presentation of Cyrus Mistry's Doongaji House. Vikram Kapadia did an ebullient performance of Naushil Mehta Commits Suicide (with flash-bulbs, Pan Parags, and kitsch). Further - playscripts were sold - even as playwrights (six of the festival playwrights to be precise) exchanged notes with audiences. And so on ....

T          he positive gains of the festival was: Doongaji House was translated into Marathi by Chetan Datar. Further Denzil Smith presented a series of monologues by Indian English playwrights alongwith his schizoid depiction of Zubin Driver's Rathod - The Cockroach Killer. Prashant Shah and his crew read out R Raj Rao's White Spaces. Iqbal Khwaja enacted Snafu. And so on ....

The trends are continuing.

In the past few years, The British Council, and the Royal Court Theatre and Rage theatre company and more recently Quasar Thakore's theatre group have been dialoguing with young playwrights. The participants have been put through a grind. It is good solid work and deserves kudos.

Toral Shah of Q Theatre Production explains: "Theatre isn't just about the end product. I've found that it's the serious dog work you put in, whether administrative or running around with zero watt bulbs that helps things shape up. I wouldn't do the kind of administrative stuff I've had to do with QTP for ICICI bank even though I'd get paid a lot there. It's the passion you have, the sense that you are contributing to theatre at the end of the day. We've put up people in our houses when they've traveled to Bombay, or gone and booked train tickets. You go beyond the call of your own production."

In the past few years, we've seen innumerable box office hits, and once again, a lot of noise. Mahesh Dattani's Dance Like a Man. Rahul da Cunha's Class of 84. Naushil Mehta's Suitable Bride (made in What's Your Rashee, recently!). Vikram Kapadia's Black with Equal. Anubhav Pal's The President is Coming (which was adapted into a feature film) Shiv Subhramanyam's Irani Cafe and Snapshots from an Album. All plays, present a mild indictment of India that is Bharat that is Hindustan. The plays talk of inertness, repression, corruption. They try to establish by tacit antithesis what it is the country lacks. Dattani explores hypocrisy and tradition. Da Cunha portrays the fallen state of Indians. Mehta examines the marriage market. Kapadia says the country is decadent, and not worth saving. Pal scrutinises imperialism. Subhramanyam introduces elements of unrequited love, doomed enterprises, and incomplete life.

But there's a big predicament with the above playwrights, their plays and Indian English theatre. Due to the baggage of colonialism, their work is resigned to a state of perpetual blasphemy. The influence of western notions of theatre have injected an artificiality into the language, and the words which are used on the stage acquire meanings divorced from cultural experience.

This is far removed from another Indian English play like Doongaji House by Cyrus Mistry. Itswell constructed and superbly rooted. The Indian English play deals with the disintegration of the Parsee social order. I greatly admire it. All the more since it is incommodious to write a play like Doongaji House, today. But no director or producer will touch it. And so, good aesthetics is sacrificed at the altar of Indianness, inter-culturalism, globalisation and colonialism.

Therefore more and more groups are breaking the rules. They re-design the classics like The Theatre Company's production of Hamlet.

Pushan Kripalani one of the younger directors of the Industrial Theatre Company says, "I realised when I was doing Macbeth that the majority of people in Bombay tend to not go to theatre, but go for "events." We realised that if you can structure an event around a play or if you can make it seem like it is bigger than a theatrical event, then people will come to see it. Satyadev Dubey used to say that if you price your ticket at Rs 20, no one will come, but if you price the same ticket at Rs 200, you'll fill your house! In a way that's true. The notion of what is desirable largely depends upon what it costs, at one level. We figured this early on and decided to attempt it. I don't know whether it's worked. All I can say is that we're breaking even; we're not in losses, and in theatre that's a pretty big deal, especially if you're completely uncompromising about the kind of work you want to do."

Later, Kripalani says, "That is only said by people who think English is elitist. I don't think that's true any more. It's just a language. But by elitist if you mean "exclusive" because the language is spoken by far fewer, then possibly. But that's a question of numbers, not a question of a political or a social position. If you're doing English theatre for whatever reasons, you're talking to an island, a smaller island than Hindi theatre and a much smaller island than Marathi theatre. But I don't think that makes it elitist. I think people write in English and they don't consider themselves elite. There's a huge resurgence of Indian writing in English. They know that they're talking to a limited audience, but they do it anyway. It doesn't mean you can stifle or choose to ignore a voice simply because it's a small one. That would be a folly, don't you think?"
It's an atypical scenario. As a playwright and theatre person, my sympathies are with the present. But how do I depict it on stage? Here one has a few posers.

One, what is a playwright's relation to an identity, which lacks a common language, a common canon, and even a common platform?
Two, to paraphrase G P Deshpande "the modern Indian painter has on the face of it solved [this] problem for himself. Not only he does the Western tradition very well, but he also does not necessarily have to carry the burden of ethnicity. His logic is impeccably modern."

Carl Miller of the Royal Court Theatre in London who conducted a workshop in India with Indian English playwrights said "We've been in India for two years. Our criteria is writing quality and not reputation, we are just as willing to consider a playwright with one play as one who has written twenty. The whole process is useless unless something interesting emerges from the dialogue. For me some of the most valuable collaborations from London theatre are when people have come from other approaches and backgrounds, because they have transformed it. If you consider twentieth century British theatre, a vast majority of exciting and innovative stuff is born of the contact between the country and the world outside. My own work is enriched by this practice.