Theatre is a great lie that gets us to arrive at a great truth

Last week, our Club was addressed by Dr Vijaya Mehta, Executive Director, National Center for Performing Arts, who was given the Shyam Munshi Award for Performing Arts. Dr Mehta founded the pathbreaking theatre group Rangayan in the 60s, which created and fostered a new breed of playwrights, actors, directors and production designers. She acted and directed plays, films and TV productions in Marathi and Hindi (many of them award winners) and was one of the earliest to take theatre productions overseas.

Vijaya directed German actors in Indian plays, both contemporary and classical. She is the winner of several national and international awards for her works in theatre, films and TV, including Padmashree, Sangeet Naatak Academy award, Kalidas Samman, Rashtrapati Puraskar, Maharashtra Gaurav Puraskar and Master Dinanath Puraskar.

Vijaya spoke on the ‘Indianness of Indian Theatre.’

“What is theatre?” she asked. “In the words of Pablo Picasso: Theatre, like all arts, is a lie — a lie that gets us to arrive at the great truth. I think that sums it up beautifully. Because, how much more of a lie can there be than when you go to see a theatre with painted backdrops made out of cloth, folding furniture, actors’ made up faces... But, at the end of it all, that something, with its exquisite quality, becomes an experience of a lifetime! So this falsehood, a recreated, designed reality, tranforms itself into truth.

“My guru Peter Brook explains beautifully how theatre is generated. Peter says: ‘Any space can be a theatre, if a man walks, bends down, ties his shoelace, and walks off, knowing that he is being watched by another person, the actions that he performs in order to share that moment with somebody, is theatre.

“I have found theatre fascinating. My generation was a part of the renaissance in the 60s and 70s, when lots of things happened in theatre, in music and in cinema, like an explosion. I think it happened because we were a post-independent generation, and were very proud of being Indians. We were recognized as Indian theatre people and invited to workshops abroad.

“I will share with you a surprise that I once got. I was invited to an international workshop at Oxford, where all young directors of the world had gathered. I was given a small exercise from a play called Ubu Roi (King Ubu), written by Alfred Jarry. We were all asked to do a 20-minute excerpt from that play in our own national idiom. It was very exciting, because I have always been proud that I am a Maharashtrian, and that Marathi theatre was very vibrant.

“When I started thinking about the structure, suddenly I discovered that the structure was not mine — that it was given to me by the Britishers, and was very Shakespearian. There was nothing Indian about it. So I said to myself, ‘OK, let me try Marathi Sangeet Natak. Then sitting in Oxford, I realized that Sangeet Natak is based on operator; so what was the Indian interpretation that I was going to add to Alfred Jarry? In desperation, an urban person like myself turned to Tamasha, a folk theatre in Maharashtra. I had never thought of touching it even, although I loved it, because it represented a certain lifestyle, and as nationalists, we refrained from contaminating it. Because it was something so good with a rural ambience, we felt it was improper to put it on stage in urban circumstances.

“However, I decided to try it in Oxford, and my fellow participants were stunned. Afterwards, in our brainstorming sessions, they termed it ‘naive, direct, virile, improvisational, and in its simplicity, absolutely sophisticated’. To me, it was an introduction and awakening to my own theatre, to an awareness that an urban mind like mine can be influenced by even folk elements whose context has changed.

“I feel that our generation was fortunate in having an international context in which to define our Indianness. That has enriched our work.

“I will give you another example from the Tamasha discovery. When I say ‘I’, it means my generation. All theatre persons did that in writing, play acting, ... all like Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, Shambhu Mitra and others — some elders, others youngsters — we all became a sort of a gang.

“After discovering my experience with folk, I asked myself: ‘Can I not try to bring classical traditions to people? I don’t know how many of you have seen classical Indian theatre. For us, it did not exist. We called Kathakkali and Kudiattam dance forms; they were not theatre for us, but I decided to probe into them. Like Tamasha, would they also present a revelation to me, I wondered. So I went to Kerala. In a place called Guruvayur, there was a man called Mani Madhav Chakiyar. We sat in his small, dark house, with drums lying around. In broken Hindi, he asked: ‘What do you want?’ I said: ‘I am trying to do an experimental play called Mudra Rakshas in classical theatre style. I don’t know how to go about with it. I want to see Kudiattam.”

“He agreed to help me. He said classical theatre began with naandi, a fascinating form of starting or introduction. The story goes like this: Parvati is seated on Shiva’s lap in an amorous mood, and jealous of the Ganga who has perched on Shiva’s hair. Parvati keeps asking Shiva: ‘Why have you kept Ganga on your head?’ And he answers: ‘Ganga is not a she’. The play weaves around the cunning of Shiva and suspiciousness of Parvati, as seen in their conversation, which is in a verse form.

“Chakiyar, the 72-year-old man, wearing a white cloth called mundu wrapped around his waist, demonstrated how this conversation was acted out. So I sat there ten feet away from him in his dark, dingy little house. He signalled, and all of a sudden drums started beating — the Bagdalam, the Chanda, the Adikyam, et al. Even now, as I speak, I feel the hypnotic effects of the drum beats pervading the whole space. The room disappeared, and I was transported and felt that I was in the presence of something majestic.

“The man began playing the dual role of Parvati and Shiva. As Parvati, he would tuck in one end of his mundu at his waistline, and as Shiva he sat on a wooden chair, untucked and let the mundu flow free. I have never ever seen a Parvati so exquisitely beautiful. I have never seen a Shiva so handsome and so cunning. I sat there and wept as if I were alone in the presence of God. I then realized what theatre was all about — the falsehood of that old man made me arrive at a state where inhibitions and convictions, all became so fluid and beautiful. And this vision has remained with me always.

“So I decided to try this out — fully aware that I was not a Mani Madhav Chakiyar, but Vijaya from Mumbai, with a group of actors waiting to work with me in a place called Weimar in Germany. And that was another wonderful realization dawned on me: this theatre form from Kerala was something very ritualistic, very pure, grammatically so tense that it gave a lot of concentration to the actor. Contrast this with German Democratic Republic, where I would work with German actors who did not believe in rituals. I was concerned how we would be able to reach out the magnificance of form to them. And therefore, I decided to replace the word ‘ritualistic’ with ‘purification’. The stage that you stand on is pure and the emotions that you are expressing are pure. Purity is what we lack in modern life; so the quest was to find some time to immerse in purity.

“Typical of the German mindset, an actor who was to play Dushyanta in Shakuntala, asked: ‘Who is Dushyanta?’ I replied that Dushyanta was a king who fell in love with Shakuntala, gave her a child, and then disowned her. So, he said: ‘Can I change Dushyanta, the king? For me the king is Kaizer or Hitler. And I don’t want to have anything to do with royalty of that type. I want Dushyanta to be a common man on his journey. I want him to feel lost, high and mighty, saying that what I have done is correct’. I was introduced to my own classic by a German youngster! This is the magic of theatre, which I have enjoyed all through my life, and I still enjoy — coming through intentional falsehoods to magical moments,” Dr Vijaya Mehta concluded.

Q&A

Rtn Sitaram Shah: Most of us who belong to the same generation have the same feeling of Indianness, and we feel that Indianness is missing today, or that it does not have a special appeal for your youngsters today. Why this drift?

Dr Vijaya Mehta: I don’t have a ready explanation for this. My opinions are the same. I feel my generation is very fortunate to have had the Nehrus, the Mahatma Gandhis and Jayprakash Narayans around us. I, myself, was a volunteer in Rashtriya Seva Dal. That’s what created for a sense of commitment in a whole generation. In my early life, I never looked at theatre. I came into theatre much later in life when I was doing my Masters degree at University of Bombay. But I came with a commitment. I never thought of theatre as a way of entertaining people or becoming famous. For me, it was a commitment, something that I believed in...

Arriving at Truth Through Intentional Falsehood

“That was true of all the theatre people of my generation. This was so not only in the field of art. That’s why renaissance was possible... because it was our need to find a meaning in our lives. Kishori Amonkar, Kumar Gandharva — all these people came from that era. So there was something very magical about that era. I would put it down as our new identity as Indian, of which we were very proud. And through globalization we could understand our distinguished position, our Indian identity.