An emerging tradition in theatre

Indian theatre in English is beginning to emerge with a distinct and vigorous identity and needs to be given all possible support.

IN the first years after Independence, writing a novel in English was considered by many fiercely nationalistic people to be politically incorrect; it was the language of the colonial ruler, and, while it had its uses in government business, education, journalism and so on, it could not, according to those zealots, aspire to the realm of creative expression. Writers like R.K. Narayan, Khushwant Singh, G.V. Dessani and Mulk Raj Anand actually began writing in English while the British were still ruling, and writing in the language of the ruler had a special place. Those who began writing later, in the 1960s, like Anita Desai, had to contend with a good deal of wariness, even hostility, in her own country. But she, and others, persisted, and today there are numerous writers of Indian novels in English - perhaps too many.

In contrast, few Indian writers in English became playwrights. One could say that this was because there was not an audience for such plays, and one would be completely wrong. There were several theatre groups doing plays in English written by American or British playwrights, or translated from other European languages, and in some places like Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata there were large enough audiences to make the staging of these plays worth the effort.

There were some writers who did write plays in English, it is true; initially, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were `plays' written by Michael Madhsudhan Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, and Harindranath Chattopadhyay, which were not just impossible to stage but would have had no audience. In any case, the writers themselves used the form as a literary device rather than as a script to be performed on stage - Sri Aurobindo's Eric, King of Norway, Perseus the Deliverer and Savitri are in mellifluous verse with which a reader could be quite comfortable in a study or library. Harindranath Chattopadhyay's plays Jayadeva, Pundalik and Raidas, The Cobbler Saint are, typically, in the clever, laden-with-tricks English he revelled in, but they would attract very few indeed to a theatre.

In later years each writer wrote one or two plays - a number of these came out in the 1970s - like Dina Mehta's The Myth Makers, Snehalata Reddy's Sita, and Shiv K. Kumar's The Last Wedding Anniversary, but a couple of them did write more than one. Asif Currimbhoy was one such, Partap Sharma another, and poet Nissim Ezekiel wrote three or four plays. But again, while these were written to be actually staged, they had little or no impact on the theatre in the country. Perhaps the audiences were not ready to accept plays in English written by Indians; or the plays just failed to relate to the audiences. It was also the heady age of Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar and Girish Karnad, remember.

Perhaps it was a mix of all these factors. Whatever it was, all of these plays amounted to very little in terms of the creation of a vigorous tradition of play writing, nothing like the traditions being formed in the writing of fiction in English. Of course, the writing of plays is only one aspect of theatre; the other is the staging of the plays. Of that, more later. At this point one needs only to point out that just as this lot of plays did not add up to anything like a tradition of play writing, neither did their staging lead to the emergence of a tradition of Indian theatre in English.

THAT has happened, or is beginning to happen, now. Indian theatre in English is beginning to emerge with a distinct and, given its small size at the moment, vigorous identity. Playwright Mahesh Dattani is in the forefront of those who have made this happen; unlike others who have been writing plays earlier, Dattani is an actor and director and has his own theatre group. Consequently he has this instinctive feel for dialogue that is vital, electric and clear. His plays develop along clear lines without ever getting lost in a maze of little pointless sequences. Recently audiences all over India saw his Dance Like a Man, and in some cities his Tara, Bravely Fought The Queen and Final Solutions. These have been large audiences, people who responded to the issues, the characters and what they said.

Another playwright, also from Bangalore, is Poile Sengupta, who is a Tamil married to a Bengali civil servant. Her plays are also very strong, with clear, identifiable characters and situations. Her award-winning play Mangalam has been staged in Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi, again to large audiences which responded very strongly. Recently she wrote two short plays presented together, Alipha and Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni the latter on a very interesting, if a little controversial, theme. She, like Dattani, is also a theatre person - director, actor and with her own drama group in Bangalore.

Is it the fact that theatre persons are writing plays that is making a difference? Not really. There is Gurcharan Das, who has no connection with the stage at all but has written three plays so far which have done pretty well - Larins Sahib, Meera and 9 Jakhoo Hill. But what Das does is work very closely with a theatre group, take in its responses, sit in on improvisations and rewrite his plays with the insights he gets. 9 Jakhoo Hill was rewritten four times before it was staged.

There are others who write plays - Manjula Padmanabhan wrote Harvest which won the Onassis Award, but is yet to write another; Vijay Padaki (who is also Bangalore-based) who writes unusual plays where he supplies just the bare bones of the plot and dialogue, and leaves a great deal to the actors to work out for themselves; lately, Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics at Cornell University, United States, has done the first draft of a play, and like Gurcharan Das, he will, one expects, be working with a theatre group as he develops the play and gives it a more defined structure.

All this may not sound like much, and as theatre, it stands in the shadow of plays in Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and other languages; but there is a definite identity emerging, one that will not only grow and take on different facets, but one that needs to be commended. For one reason in particular. India has today the largest English-knowing population in the world - nobody need be surprised, we have been churning out hundreds of thousands of children from English-speaking schools and hundreds of thousands of graduates from colleges and universities where English is the medium of instruction for decades now - and this represents a very large potential audience for plays in English. English, because the plays then reach out to people all over the country directly, not through translations.

This means plays can travel with their original cast to different cities; some groups have already realised that this is an exciting possibility, and plays have been taken to different cities. Add to this the other factor money. Plays written in English, which can be taken everywhere can also attract sponsorships and advertising support. The recently presented The Spirit Of Anne Frank, done by Roysten Abel, was a joint presentation of the Dutch Embassy and ABN AMRO Bank, and the amount involved was pretty substantial. But private sponsorships apart, this new kind of theatre deserves public support of the kind the Arts Council in Britain gives to theatre there from funds it gets from the National Lottery.

True, the lion's share of public funds will always go to the Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and Kannada theatre - in actual fact, it is the Hindi theatre that gets the most of such support as the state gives - but there must be a place for the new form of Indian theatre, the English theatre. Funds need to be given for the staging of such plays; that would help the playwrights as much as the theatre groups doing the play, because once the plays are staged, then publishers are more likely to accept them for publication.

Besides, this new theatre - like any other kind of theatre - cannot be kept alive only by enthusiastic part-timers. There must be a professional core, and that means money. It is not an impossible task; it can be done, if the value of nurturing this new tradition is accepted.

And accepted it has to be. In a society being increasingly pulled apart, there are a few elements that can highlight what we share, what we have in common, and do it directly, with dramatic intensity. Theatre which is instantly understood everywhere, and needs no translation, is one of the most valuable aspects of our creative tradition that has emerged in recent years. It deserves to be given all the support that it can get.